
Glass 

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THE STORY OF THE STATES 

EDI TED UY 

ELBKIDGR S BROOKS 



i J 1 




THE STORY OF THE STATES 



THE STORY OF LOUISIANA 



BY, 



MAURICE THOMPSON 



3/ 



o 





Illustrations by L J Bridgman 



BOSTON 

D LOTHROP COMPANY 

FRANKLIN AND HAWLEY STREETS 



\ 



Copyright, 1888, 

BY 

D. LoTHROP Company. 



BERWICK & SMITH, PRINTERS, BOSTON. 



PREFACE 



The task assumed in undertaking to write this " Story of 
Louisiana " was full of difficulties of a kind not discoverable 
at a first glance. It was not a history that was demanded of 
me, but something more and something less than a detailed 
record of all the events of interest connected with the birth 
and growth of the great Commonwealth under consideration. 
It must be a connected, succinct story, free from dreary statis- 
tics and relieved of everything like political or social philos- 
ophy, and yet bearing upon its current the very sheens and 
shadows of the life it is meant to reflect, and containing in its 
substance the essential truths of the history it represents. 

Such a story is not to be well told by him who runs as he tells 
it. Easy reading for an ease-loving public is prepared at the 
expense of untiring labor, even when genius drives the pen and 
fiction is the product most desired ; much more is it a work 
of toil when the mere uninspired compiler of events is expected 
to link and group dry facts in a way that will insure the most 
truthful and at the same time the most picturesque impression 
of the history involved. The novelist may, nay, he must, take 
liberties with truth. The historian has no alternative ; he must 
follow the current of his subject from fact to fact and take 
things just as they present themselves. This Procrustean de- 
mand of truth presents to the writer a limitation singularly 
inimical to unity of effect and peculiarly deadly to dramatic 
directness of presentation, especially when the history in hand 
is to be so brief as to enforce the utmost economy of phrasing. 



PREFACE. 



The history of Louisiana is so rich in minor incidents and 
so barren of any great features exclusively its own, that to 
write it with best effect would require several volumes as large 
as the one here presented. Much that belongs to the stories of 
Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois and Texas 
would have to be included in such a work. For obvious rea- 
sons, therefore, I have confined my story strictly within the 
boundaries of the Territory and the State of Louisiana. I have 
not attempted to record every incident. I have been forced to 
leave out many, and often the task of deciding what to use 
and what to reject out of the mass of materials has been a 
vexing one. Throughout this labor my aim has been to give 
a vivid, truthful and impartial impression of Louisiana's civili- 
zation from the discovery of the Mississippi River down to the 
present time, and to so do it that the whole could be dis- 
cussed fully by any reader within the space of a few hours. 



/ff^Zi^uuT/^^^ 



CONTENTS, 



CHAPTER I. 

A COLONY OF FRANCE II 

1699-1713. 

CFIAPTER II. 

A PAPER ELCORADO 35 

1713-1722. 

CHAPTER III. 

IN THE DAYS OF BIENVILLE ...... 62 

1722-1732. 

CHAPTER IV. 

FROM FRANCE TO SPAIN 88 

1734-1769. 

CHAPTER V. 

UNDER THE FLAG OF SPAIN II3 

1769-1793. 

CHAPTER VI. 

INTRIGUE AND UNREST 138 

1793-1803. 

CHAPTER VII. 

UNDER THE STARS AND STRIPES 162 

1803-1810. 



CONTENTS. 
CHAPTER VIII. 

THE TERRITORY OF ORLEANS . 

1S03-1815. 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS 

1815. 



CHAPTER X. 



THE OLD REGIME 



IN THE CIVIL WAR 



THE PELICAN STATE 



1815-1861. 

CHAPTER XI. 

1861-1874. 
CHAPTER XII. 

1874-1888. • 



184 



23s 



261 



284 



THE CHRONOLOGICAL STORY 



THE people's COVENANT 



BOOKS RELATING TO LOUISIANA 



INDEX 



325 

2>ZZ 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Packenham's charge Frontispiece. 

De Soto. Initial 1 1 

La Salle displays the arms of France 17 

At the English turn . 27 

John Law. Initial 35 

Bienville building Fort Rosalie 41 

Laying out New Orleans 55 

Father Charlevoix Initial 62 

The last reed 67 

Death to the Natchez! 81 

Bienville. Initial 88 

A primitive sugar mill 93 

Lafreniere's appeal to the council 105 

Don Alexander O'Reilly. Initial 113 

The death of Villiere 119 

On the Bayou Teche 131 

Etienne de Bore. Initial 138 

The sale of Louisiana 151 

General Wilkinson. Initial 162 

Filles a la Cassette 167 

Governor Claiborne. Initial 1S4 

" On to Orleans," : The Negro Insurrection 193 

General Jackson. Initial 210 

Jackson's Sharp-Shooters 221 

The old French Market. Initial 235 

In Acadia 249 

A Louisiana " Tiger." Initial 261 

In the cane-brake -77 

Sorghum and pelican. Initial -84 

By the old quarters -89 

On the levee -97 



THE STORY OF LOUISIANA 



CHAPTER I. 



A COLONY OF FRANCE. 




'HE vignette for 
the story of 
Louisiana was 
sketched by the 
hand of D e 
Soto, who, during four 
years of wandering, left 
his romantic autograph 
scrawled from Tampa 
Bay to the Mississippi. 
Scarcely three and a half centuries aoo the first 
rumor of the o^reat western river reached the ears 
of European nations already tingling with the fas- 
cinatinof- stories of Columbus and his followers. 
Mexico had fallen before Cortes ; Peru had poured 
her spoils into the bloody hands of Pizarro. Ships 
were slipping away from the ports of Spain with 
their prows to the southwest. The wind in their 



12 A COLONY OF FRANCE. 

sails was the breath of fortune. It was a time of 
discovery, of conquest and of booty. When the 
ships returned they came loaded with gold and 
bearing the heroes of wild battles, the doers of 
strange deeds. 

Men stood upon the eastern coasts of the Atlantic 
and shading their eyes gazed out over the blue 
water with a longing which was compounded of all 
the passions and ambitions that can stir the human 
heart. Over beyond the dreamy horizon line in 
the far southwest lay El dorado, the land of eter- 
nal bloom and fragrance, of honors easily won, of 
wealth unclaimed and undefended, the land of health 
for the sick, of youth for the aged and of kingdoms 
for the ambitious. There too was outspread a 
wide field for the enthusiasm of the priest ; there 
stretched an engaging wilderness for the labors of 
the scientist, and the discoverer. It w^as a time 
of longing, of expectation and of surprise. 

Charles V. had come to the full control of his 
vast empire; Villalar had been fought, Valencia 
had been subdued and the Castilian grandees had 
been shown that the Emperor was indeed their 
master. 

De Soto returned from Peru, whither he had 
been with Pizarro. He was covered with glory on 
account of his bravery, his energy and his discov- 
eries. Moreover he bore a burden of gold which 



A coLoyy OF France. 13 

made him one of the rich men of Spain. Charles 
borrowed a part of his fortune and in turn appointed 
him governor of Cuba and president of Florida. 
This double office, coupled with the wealth and 
prestige brought from Peru, gave De Soto an 
independence and power practically unlimited. 

At once he formed plans of conquest, and in 
1539 he landed at Tampa Bay, Florida, with an 
enthusiastic and daring band of followers whose 
imaginations were on fire with dreams of rich 
cities to be plundered, and of fertile fields to 
be foraged from. Such a march as was then 
begun by those high-spirited adventurers, if we 
may believe the story, has no parallel in his- 
tory. " It was," says Theodore Irving, " poetry put 
into action ; it was the knight-errantry of the Old 
World carried into the depths of the American 
wilderness. The personal adventures, the feats of 
individual prowess, the picturesque descriptions of 
steel-clad cavaliers with lance and helm, and pranc- 
ing steed, glittering through the wildernesses of 
Florida, Georgia, Alabama and the prairies of the 
Far West, would seem to us mere fictions of 
romance, did they not come to us in the matter-of- 
fact narratives of those who were eye-witnesses, 
and who recorded minute memoranda of every 
day's incidents." 

The wanderinos of this band of adventurers in 



14 A COLONY OF FRANCE. 

search of an empire went on from month to month. 
For nearly four years they groped in the jungles, 
waded or swam the rivers, climbed the hills, ran- 
sacked the valleys and fought the wild natives, ever 
led on by will-o'-the-wisp rumors of a fabulously 
rich country a little way off, mayhap just beyond 
the very next wall of dense forest. 

They found red nomads and shifting villages, 
they saw strange vegetation, they encountered wild 
beasts, they felt in their blood the poison of the fell 
malaria ; but here was no gold ; the cities, the cas- 
tles, and the palaces eluded them ; they began to 
fall and die by the way. 

De Soto had risked his private fortune in the 
enterprise, and doubtless felt that he could not 
turn back. His hopefulness, courage and energy 
were magnetic, as such high qualities always are, 
and his men kept up their expectancy without flag- 
o-ino- until at last the Mississippi River was reached. 
Here was a stream of immense volume, dark and tur- 
bulent, rolling majestically through the wilderness 
to the sea. While attempting to follow the river 
to its mouth De Soto fell ill ; he died, and on the 
twenty-first of May, 1542, his body was buried be- 
neath the muddy waters of "the Hidden River." 
Thus the hero of Darien and Peru found a grave 
in the stream the discovery of which was the only 
valuable fruit of that long disastrous journey. His 



A COLON y OF FRANCE. 1 5 

substance was wasted; his dream of empire was 
dispelled. " The Adelaiitado of Cuba and Florida," 
says Dr. Shea; "he who had hoped to gather the 
wealth of nations, left as his property five Indian 
slaves, three horses and a herd of swine." But his 
discovery of the great river of the West and the 
untold difficulties through which he won its banks 
have given him a place in history as imperishable 
as that achieved by Cortes and Pizarro, the con- 
querors of empires. 

De Soto's little band thus deprived of their inde- 
fatigable leader, attempted to go back overland to 
F"lorida, but were unable to do it. They returned 
to the river and, fighting their way through hosts 
of Indian foemen, navigated the Mississippi to its 
mouth, a voyage of nineteen days. Once more 
upon the sea they coasted around to Panuco in 
Mexico whence some of them returned to Spain 
and made public the story of the expedition. 
Thus began in disaster and death the story of 
of Louisiana. 

It is probable that the Mississippi was swollen 
by the spring rains at about the time of De Soto's 
death, and the survivors of the band no doubt gave 
an exaggerated description of its mighty volume. 
The imagination of the Si)aniard clung to the idea 
of conquest, and the thought of leading a fleet up 
this 2:reat river of the West was full of fascination. 



1 6 .4 COLOA'V OF FRANCE. 

Juan Ponce de Leon had discovered Florida in 
1512, but had failed in his attempt to colonize it. 
Sixteen years later Pamphilo de Narvaez entered 
the bay of Pensacola, and with about four hun- 
dred men remained there nearly six months; 
then he sailed away to the westward and went 
down in a storm on the gulf, off the mouth of 
the Mississippi. 

In 1564 Rene Gonlaine de Laudonniere landed 
near the present site of St. Augustine ; from thence 
he went up the St. John River and built Fort Caro- 
line which he filled with a garrison of Huguenots. 
This was deemed an insult to the Spanish Catholics 
and was. resented in the most inhuman way by Pedro 
Menendez de Aviles, general of the fleet to New 
Spain and Adelantado of Florida. Hastily gather- 
ing a sufficient force Menendez pounced upon the 
fort and murdered every Frenchman it contained, 
hanging up their bodies with the label attached, 
" I do not this to Frenchmen, but to Heretics." A 
little later Dominic de Gourgues, the Frenchman, 
sailed into the mouth of the St. John and in like 
manner hung up the Spaniards, not because they 
were Spaniards, but because they were "traitors, 
robbers and murderers." It was by such bloody 
steps as these that the reign of the Buccaneers 
came on apace, until at length almost every sail 
on the Spanish main was that of a pirate. 




LA SALLE DISPLAYS THE ARMS OF FRANCE. 



^ 



A COLOXY OF FRANCE. 1 9 

Meantime on the Antilles and along the coasts 
of Mexico colonies had been thriving or lan- 
guishing, feasting or starving, as the fortunes of 
the time favored or frowned ; but the mouth of 
the o-reat river had called in vain for an explorer. 
Indeed, as the wealth of Mexico and Peru dis- 
appeared and as the wars of Europe encouraged 
privateering, the business of exploring was given 
over for the wild life of the corsair. A ship with 
heavy guns, a reckless, motley crew and a ren- 
dezvous in one of the Caribbean islands w^ere the 
prerequisites to a free life on the ocean as master 
buccaneer. The Gulf of Mexico was dotted with 
the dark hulls and gleaming sails of errant vessels 
prowling for prey. The sentiment flung from one 
deck to another was taking the form of " Death to 
the Spaniard ! " 

Little enough like prosy history are the accounts 
we have of those strange days. The picture is 
peculiar in all its details. Men of iron hearts, 
w^ithout conscience or the sentiment of mercy, 
gathered from all over the world and banded them- 
selves together for two purposes : the killing of 
Spaniards and the capture of gold. All the sea, 
from the Antilles to the western shore of the Gulf 
of Mexico, is prowled over by these dark-faced, 
restless corsair bands, who descend upon the Span- 
ish settlements to slay, to pillage and to burn. 



iO A COLONY OF FRANCE. 

Wherever a priest has set a cross and said a mass 
or suno- the Te Dcum in the name of Heaven and 
the Spanish king, comes to redden the spot with 
blood and to bear away its booty the reckless and 
remorseless buccaneer. 

It is a savagely picturesque life of which the 
chronicles of the old voyagers give us glimpses — 
when priests were pirates and gentlemen were 
robbers, when Great Britain and France permitted, 
nay, encouraged, the building and equipping of 
buccaneer vessels in their shipyards, and bade 
them godspeed as sails were set and prows were 
boldly headed toward the Spanish main. We can- 
not altogether realize that we are reading what is 
substantially true, the coloring is so romantic, the 
atmosphere so like that of poetry, the grouping so 
strangely fantastic and the whole impression so 
alien to the lines of life as we know them. There 
is an Homeric ring in the story of De Soto and his 
battles, his wanderings, his dream of new golden 
fortunes and his pathetic death — a ring which 
echoes clearly enough from beyond the booming 
of corsair guns and through the hoarse shouts of 
pirate crews boarding the hapless merchant ships 
of the Spanish king a century or so later. 

In 1673 Marquette and Joliet reached the 
Mississippi from the Canadian settlements and 
navio'ated its waters as far southward as the mouth 



A COLONY OF FRANCE. 21 

of the Arkansas River. Nine years later the Sieur 
de la Salle set out from Canada, and embarking 
at the mouth of the Illinois River went down the 
Mississippi to the Gulf where he set up a cross 
bearino: the arms of France. 

This voyage gave rise to another still more re- 
markable. La Salle returned to France and made 
such representations and reports as secured to 
him the command of a fleet sent by his govern- 
ment, ostensibly to explore and fortify the mouths 
of the Mississippi, but really to make conquest 
of a rich mining province in Mexico. He pre- 
tended to lose his course, and so steered past the 
Mississippi and entered Matagorda Bay on the 
coast of Texas. Here he lost a part of his fleet 
and spent a long time making excursions into the 
interior, without any valuable results, after which, 
having looked in vain for reinforcements that 
had been promised to him, he undertook to make 
his way with fifty men to the Mississippi and 
thence on to Canada. But while wandering in the 
Louisiana marshes he was basely murdered by his 
companions who, after incredible hardships, again 
reached the Mississippi, and ascending it returned 
to the French settlements and thence to France. 

By this time the thought of taking and holding 
the great valley of the Mississippi had fastened 
itself in the minds of many ambitious men who 



2 2 A COLONY OF FRANCE. 

beo-an to see that the river was the key to the 
continent. A hundred and fifty miles to the east- 
ward of the great river — at Pensacola on the 
western coast of Florida — there was a weak set- 
tlement, chiefly a rendezvous for Spanish pirates, 
thouo-h on o-ood terms with all manner of roving 
free-booters of the sea ; but from this point west- 
ward to the mouth of the Mississippi and far 
beyond, the coast was unoccupied. The prize, the 
most valuable that ever was captured by man, lay 
untouched ; but not long. 

In 1699 Pierre Le Moyne d' Iberville, a native of 
Canada, and styled by his admirers "the Cid of 
New France," came from France with emigrants to 
the Gulf coast and cast anchor about sixty miles 
east of the present site of New Orleans. Soon 
there were French colonies at Biloxi, at Bay St. 
Louis, and on Ship Island and Cat Island. Mobile 
was then made the capital of so-called Louisiana, 
and thus remained until some time after the found- 
ing of New Orleans. 

The shores of all the little bays on the Gulf 
coast between Mobile and the Mississippi's mouth 
are beautiful white bluffs rising from five to thirty 
feet above the water. The soil is sandy and light, 
but the forests that grow from it are dense and 
dark, composed of giant live-oaks, water-oaks, 
magnolias, pines, cedars and a great variety of 



A COLONY OF FINANCE. 23 

smaller trees. Viewed from a distance off-shore, 
these bluffs looked like a range of low, dark hills 
with chalk cliffs breaking from the front. A line 
of islands, the chief of which are Cat and Ship, 
runs parallel with the general trend of the coast at 
a distance of from ten to thirty miles out, forming 
a sound which is a safe harbor for small craft, and 
in places is sufficiently deep to accommodate heavy 
ships. Naturally enough, therefore, these beautiful, 
dry and breezy bluffs were first chosen as sites for 
settlements. The aborigines, too, had been pleased 
with the reo-ion, and for manv years the chiefs and 
warriors of the Southern Indians with their wives 
and children had made it a summer resort, camping 
on the high points under the spreading live-oaks and 
bathing in the shallow surf of the sandy beaches. 

The place was one to invite repose and dream- 
ing. The placid water, the blooming, fragrant 
forests and the warm Southern breezes lulled am- 
bition, quieted avarice, and for a time threatened to 
overcome even the restless energy of the explorers. 
The estuaries and creeks were teeming with fish, 
and the woods and jungles were full of game, so 
that it required no great effort to procure plenty of 
food of the most wholesome sort. It was a lotus 
land in which the careless adventurers lay down for 
a time to laze and dream. 

D' Iberville, however, kept his mind on the great 



24 A COLO An- OF FINANCE. 

river over beyond the Rigolets and Ponchartrain. 
His dream was of founding a city and of building 
up a rich colony in this charming country. 

Meantime the Spanish and the English were 
feelino- their way toward the mouth of the 
Mississippi. Pensacola was the base of Spanish 
operations whilst the British as yet had no im- 
mediate footing, but were sailing along the coasts 
and seeking a favorable spot for a colony. 

Two schemes suggested themselves in connec- 
tion with the plans of colonization : one maritime, 
the other agricultural. On one hand it appeared 
practicable to build a coast city and fortress with 
a good harbor from which the navigation of the 
Gulf could be controlled and the trade with Mexico 
be monopolized, whilst on the other hand the 
Mississippi Valley was known to be incomparably 
fertile, and of an extent which made it the most 
promising area of the New World for the founding 
of an empire. The river, however, for a hundred 
miles above its mouth had no banks that offered 
a site for a town. Dreary marshes and dusky 
swamps inundated by every freshet, alternated with 
lakes and bayous, the haunts of water-fowl and 
alligators and infested with tormenting insects and 
deadly malarias. 

Against the project of building a city on the 
Gulf bluffs was the fact that the soil was poor and 



A COLONY OF FRANCE. 25 

incapable of supporting a dense population. To 
this day those beautiful sand bluffs remain what 
they were then, simply the charmingest spots in 
the world for refuge from the heat of our Southern 
summer and for resting-places during the cold of 
our Northern winter. To Bay St. Louis, Pass 
Christian, Biloxi, Mississippi City, and Ocean 
Springs the wealthy families of New Orleans go 
to reside during the sultry months in picturesque 
cottages overlooking that very sea whereon the 
little fleet of dTberville lay at anchor in the last 
year of the seventeenth century, and under the same 
wide-spreading, dusky oak-trees that sheltered the 
lio-ht-hearted and reckless adventurer who a little 
later followed the fortunes of his brother lieutenant 
Bienville. 

Soon after landing at Ship Island, dTberville 
found his way into the mouth of the Mississippi 
and proceeded up the stream, probably as far as to 
the mouth of Red. River. Returning he explored 
and named lakes Maurepas and Ponchartrain. It 
was on March 2, 1699, that the commandant first 
entered the Mississippi " With two row-boats, some 
bark canoes and fifty-three men." The spring was 
opening and the scenes that greeted his eyes w^ere 
of a kind to impress his imagination and to fill his 
mind with glowing anticipations. He saw that the 
country was one of incomparable importance to 



26 A COLONY OF FRANCE. 

his Government, and becoming aware that British 
vessels were trying to find a suitable spot for a 
colony, on May 3 he left his company under con- 
trol of Sauvolle de la Villantry, " a discreet young 
man of merit and capable of fulfilling his duty," 
and sailed for France. 

At this time the chief nations of Europe were 
looking askance at each other, regarding the out- 
come of a great game of diplomacy. The represen- 
tative of France had secured a controlling influence 
over the court of Spain; Charles II. had been in- 
duced to make a will nominating Philip, Duke of 
Anjou, as his heir and for the moment Louis XIV. 
was happy, feeling that civil strategy had done 
for him what war could never have accomplished. 
Complications followed almost immediately, how- 
ever, and for some years little attention was paid to 
the brave Canadian and his handful of followers 
who along the course of the great river of the West 
were struggling to secure for France a territory 
which was soon to attract the eyes of the whole 
world. 

Sauvolle looked about him for the best means 
of carrying out d' Iberville's orders to explore the 
country. He had formed pleasant relations with 
the chief of the Bayagoulas Indians and he dis- 
patched a party of his men under Bienville, with 
this chief as guide, to the region north of Lake 




AT THE ENGLISH TURN, 



A COLOXY OF FKAXCE. 29 

Ponchartrain. The expedition set out from Biloxi, 
where, on the east coast, d' Iberville had erected a 
rude fort between two ravines. 

Bienville, who had been named by d' Iberville as 
the "lieutenant of the king" or the second in com- 
mand, was a younger brother of the absent d' Iber- 
ville. He was a bright young fellow of eighteen, 
active, ambitious and brilliant. Such a mission was 
exactly suited to his taste. He pressed forward 
across the Jordan and Pearl rivers in the country 
of the Colipassas. From these Indians, who were 
acquainted with the English, he learned that British 
adventurers had recently led a band of Chickasaws 
in an attack upon a village of the Colipassas. 

With this startling intelligence he hastened back 
to the fort to consult with Sauvolle, and in accord- 
ance with certain suggestions in the orders left by 
d'Iberville, he made some explorations to the east- 
ward, and then sailed around into the Mississippi. 
After an examination of the two bayous, Plaque- 
mines and Chetimachas, Bienville on the sixteenth 
of September was returning home when at a 
point, eighteen miles below where New Orleans 
now stands, he suddenly came upon a British frigate 
carrying twelve guns. The vessel proved to be one 
of an English fleet sent by a claimant to a large 
grant in the province of South Carolina. The in- 
trepid young French lieutenant though startled at 



30 A COLONY OF FRANCE. 

the sight was quite equal to the occasion. He told 
the English commander a fine story, representing 
that France had already taken possession of the 
river, that colonies had been planted at many points 
on its banks, and that he was just now returning 
from a visit to them. Thereupon the vessel turned 
about and with a threat from its captain to return 
at some time and assert England's right to this new 
discovery, it sailed out of the Mississippi, and left 
the young diplomat master of the situation. And 
ever since that day the bend of the river at the 
point where this strategy was performed has been 
called the English Turn. 

The colony at Biloxi was not prosperous. Sau- 
volle, an invalid at best, was slowly dying of fever 
and Bienville could do no more than make rather 
aimless excursions hither and thither while waiting 
to receive aid from France. The days and months 
dragged slowly by until August 22, 1701, when 
Sauvolle died suddenly leaving young Bienville at 
the head of affairs. In March, 1702 dTberville 
returned and brought supplies. His first orders to 
Bienville were to leave twenty men with Boisbriant, 
his cousin, in charge of the fort at Biloxi, and with 
the rest of the garrison to go ox'er to Mobile Bay 
and establish a post there. This was promptly done 
and dTberville returned to France. Now began a 
long and bitter period of waiting and watching, 



A COLO XV OF FRANCE. 31 

sickness, starvation, death. For a time, indeed, all 
went well. The colony had plenty of provisions 
and even sent supplies to its Spanish neighbors at 
Pensacola, This could not last, however, and at 
length the men were reduced to the last extremity 
of sufferino:. 

The great Continental War of 1703 had begun 
and d'Iberville had been detained and ordered to 
duty in the French navy. The mother country 
had little time to think of her weak and distant 
little colony. The battle of Blenheim was in the 
near future, and the whole of Europe was under 
the strain of tremendous excitement. At the last 
moment Bienville received some supplies from 
Pensacola, and a little later a French vessel com- 
manded by d' Iberville's brother Chateauguay came 
to his relief. 

In 1705 another vessel arrived from France and 
the supply it bore to the bachelor colonists con- 
sisted in part of twenty poor but pretty girls sent 
to them by their king with the following note: — 

" His Majesty sends twenty girls to be married to the Canadians and to 
the other inhabitants of Mobile, in order to consolidate the colony." 

It may be added as the fitting close to this incipi- 
ent romance that this "cargo of girls " was speedily 
disposed of and that there were twenty marriages 
within thirtv davs of the arrival of the carcfo. 



32 A COLONY OF FRANCE. 

Dissensions arose between Bienville and some 
of the other officials of the colony, and the former 
came near losing his place. He was saved by an 
accident and by almost incredible energy and tact 
kept the interest in Louisiana from dying out in 

France. 

Colonization proceeded but slowly. In 171 2 the 
total population reached barely four hundred per- 
sons, including twenty negroes, and it is asserted 
that Bienville was compelled to keep a strict watch 
over the few " rich men " of the colony lest they 
should run away. 

On the fourteenth of September of this very year 
of 1 712, the French government granted to the 
Sieur Antony Crozat the exclusive right, for fifteen 
years, of trading in the undefined territory then 
claimed by France under the name of Louisiana, 
and to which the Mississippi River was the royal 
highway. Crozat, who was a man of immense 
wealth became thus, in fact if not in name, the 
owner of that great country. He sent La Mothe 
Cadillac to be governor in place of Bienville. The 
"Father of the Colony," as Louisianians love to 
call Bienville, was nominated Lieutenant-Governor. 
Cadillac and his subalterns arrived on the seven- 
teenth of May, 1 71 3, and landed on Dauphine 
Island. The country was in the full blow of a 
semi-tropical spring, but Cadillac had no eye for 



A COLONY OF FRANCE. 33 

the picturesque. He was greatly disappointed. 
This was not the Eldorado that he had come to 
find. Crozat believed that Kino- Louis had oiven 
him a lien on a treasure land and he had ordered 
his governor to search for mines of precious metal. 
Cadillac had thus been led to expect that a career 
surpassing that of Pizarro in Peru would at once 
open to him. Instead of this he found a poor- 
looking sandy coast and a scattered and wretched 
little colony, whose only revenue seemed to be 
derived from the sale of vegetables to their Spanish 
neighbors of Florida. It was a sad blow to his 
high schemes and he could see but a gloomy pros- 
pect in every way. Bienville received him with 
courtesy, but, naturally enough, felt humiliated by 
the situation. It looked to the brave Canadian 
as if the fourteen years that he had given to 
holding Louisiana for his king were but poorly 
rewarded when this domineering and irascible 
stranger was suddenly sent over to supersede him. 
Nothing was left to him, however, but to put on 
an air of submission and to trust to that fortune 
which hitherto had favored him. 

Cadillac and Bienville were not constituted to 
be friends in any sense of the word. The pre- 
dicament of their official relations, therefore, did not 
tend to lessen the uncongeniality of their natures. 
Bienville felt that, in a certain measure, the govern- 



34 



A COLONY OF FINANCE. 



ment of the territory of Louisiana belonged of right 
to him. In his eyes Cadihac was a usurper. The 
new governor of course was not slow in discovering 
this. He was of a haughty and arrogant temper, 
and seized the first opportunity to use his authority 
in a way that would make Bienville feel most 
keenly the change in his position. 

In truth the colony in many regards was in a 
bad condition. The settlers had grown reckless 
and dissolute to a degree and even under Bienville 
had been inclined to do about as they pleased. 
The coming of Cadillac did not help matters any. 
It was not possible for a man wholly unacquainted 
with the life and requirements of colonists in a 
new land to attract to himself such men as had 
for so long been the companions and friends of 
Bienville. A few weeks of observation convinced 
Cadillac that the situation demanded prompt and 
decisive action on his part. He must either subdue 
Bienville or get him out of the way. 



CHAPTER II. 



A PAPER ELDORADO 




ROM the point 
of view afforded 
by the present 
v^ ^ time, Crozat's 

purposes appear to have 
been flexible enough to 
cover every scheme for 
money-making, from legiti- 
mate trading, on one hand, 
to smuggling, on the other, 
and from the discovery of gold mines, if possible, 
to downright piracy, if practicable. Cadillac was 
not the man to make the most of the position 
he now held, nor were the resources at his com- 
mand sufficient to carry out the plans matured 
by his master. 

The whole trouble arose out of a misconception 
on Crozat's part of the nature of the country and 
the strength of the colonies. The rumor had 
gone abroad in France that Louisiana was a land 
of indescribable riches, and the fact that from time 

35 



.5 A PAPER ELDORADO. 

to time vessels returned from sailing on the West- 
ern seas loaded with gold, had added the weight 
of fascinating substance to the body of the report. 
It is easy to understand that a buccaneer coming 
into a European port with a cargo of rich booty 
would prefer a romantic lie to a frank confession 
of the truth. Many a so-called trader, who was in 
fact a pirate, after making a successful cruise in the 
Western waters, retired to a pleasant chateau in 
France, and during the rest of his life told over 
and over the story of his peaceful but amazing 
adventures in the wild, strange countries of the 
great American continent. Others of a different 
cast of imagination constructed so-called journals 
wherein was embodied a circumstantial account of 
explorations and martial encounters the details of 
which were almost as marvelous as those of the 
Arabian Nights. 

Such romances served the double purpose of 

hiding the truth and of inflaming the wonder- 

loving minds of the people. The rich silver mhies 

of Mexico and the enormous loads of precious 

metals brought to Spain, France and Great Britain 

had o-iven color to Crozat's orders; consequently 

Cadillac began a fruitless search for mineral deposits. 

In 1715 he went himself to the Illinois country, but 

brought back no gold. By his avarice and cruelty 

he alienated the savage tribes with whom Bienville 



A PAPER ELDORADO. 37 

had established friendly relations. Some of the 
men sent out by him to prospect for mines were 
killed. This gave him a pretext for dispatching 
Bienville up the Mississippi with orders to punish 
the Natchez Indians. A fanciful story is told that 
Cadillac's daughter had fallen in love with Bien- 
ville, and that this expedition against the Natchez 
was planned by her precious father with the hope 
of having the young Lieutenant-Governor killed 
because he refused to return her affection. 

At all events, in the month of April, 1716, Bien- 
ville, who had been commissioned " Commandant 
of the Mississippi," set out with a handful of fol- 
lowers and made his way up the great river to one 
of the northern islands. Here he began prepara- 
tions for carrying out Cadillac's orders against the 
offending tribe. He built a rude fort containins: 
three log houses, and a little later, having brought 
the offending tribe into subjection, and having 
concluded to make the place a permanent post, he 
forced the Indians to aid him in buildins: a strongr 
palisade and some comfortable houses ; in these he 
remained until the twenty-ninth of August. This 
place he named Fort Rosalie. 

Leaving the post in charge of Pailloux he 
returned to Mobile and found that Cadillac had 
been superseded by Monsieur de I'Epinay. The 
latter was not present, however, and orders were 



.^ A PAPER ELDORADO. 

awaiting Bienville to act as governor until his 
superior should arrive. This turn of affairs was 
a matter of great rejoicing with the majority of 
the colonists, who were heartily tired of the unwise 
policy pursued by Cadillac. Bienville, too, was 
delighted. He felt, no doubt, that at last his 
reward was near. 

L'Epinay landed at Mobile March 9, I7i7. with 
three companies of infantry and f^fty colonists, and 
handed to Bienville the cross of St. Louis and a 
grant of the title to Horn Island. Bienville had 
expected more. He felt that L'Epinay was in his 
path quite as much as Cadillac had been. Of 
course quarreling began forthwith. The new gov- 
ernor found himself confronted by insubordination 
from the start, and the scattered and miserable 
condition of the colonists put a deadly damper on 
the brilliant anticipations he had been indulging. 
The policy of Cadillac had demoralized his sub- 
jects ; each man had in a measure taken the 
law into his own hands. There was no organiza- 
tion, no centralization, no government, in fact. 
L'Epinay reported the condition of things to 
Crozat, who in August, 171 7- threw up his con- 
tract with the French government and abandoned 
Louisiana with all its glamor and romance, glad 
enough to be freed from the trouble and expense 
the project had entailed upon him. He had failed 



A PAPER ELDORADO. 39 

utterly to accomplish anything in the direction of 
opening a trade with Mexico, the furs obtained 
from the savages were not valuable and not a gold 
mine, a silver mine, nor a pearl fishery had been 
found by his agents. Moreover agriculture had 
been almost wholly neglected, whilst debauchery 
and indecent wrangling among officers and men 
had reduced the morals of the colony to the very 
lowest ebb. 

Meantime, however, a large amount of valuable 
information had been collected regarding the 
geography and the natural resources of the great 
territory. Bienville had made many excursions 
far into the interior and Cadillac himself, as 
has been stated, had in 1715 penetrated a long way 
northward in search of a mining region reported 
to him as very rich and lying somewhere in the 
country of the Illinois. He was absent eight 
months ; he wandered about all the northern wil- 
derness, and of course returned empty-handed. 

Without doubt Cadillac was the worst possible 
sort of a governor, and yet the impartial student of 
the old records cannot fail to discover a strong 
element of truth in the dispatches sent by him 
to the French government. In one of these, so 
Gayarre tells us, he exclaims : " What can I do 
with a force of forty soldiers, out of whom five 
or six are disabled t A pretty army this, and well 



40 A PAPER ELDORADO. 

calculated to make me respected by the inhabitants 
or by the Indians ! As a climax to my vexation, 
they are badly fed, badly paid, badly clothed and 
without discipline. As to the officers, they are not 
much better. Verily, I do not believe that there is 
in the whole universe such another o^overnment." 

So little was he respected by the colonists that 
he could not rely upon any emissary he sent out. 
The Canadians whom he dispatched to look for 
gold and silver, went their ways as they pleased. 
His collegue Bienville did not hesitate to balk him 
in every available way, and was continually writing 
to France the most disparaging accounts of his 
government, his methods, and his character. 

7"he truth appears to be that Bienville was a 
man of considerable ability, a strong, active, rather 
far-seeing and somewhat unscrupulous schemer, 
who from the first felt that to him of right 
belonged the task of moulding the destiny of 
Louisiana. His o-enius was cunnino- and to a 

o c? 

degree treacherous, though at need he was bold 
and openly courageous. 

L'Epinay could not do without Bienville's aid, 
and yet he could not bear his insubordination. 
Consequentl}^ instead of at once beginning ener- 
getic measures for the advancement of the colonies, 
the two rivals fell to quarreling disgracefully and 
so added to the prevailing demoralization. 



A PAPER EJ,l)ORADO. 43 

Cadillac's return to I'rance doubtless added 
much to public interest in the subject of Louisiana 
colonization, for the deposed governor was a mighty 
talker, full of that peculiar enthusiasm for self- 
o-lorification characteristic of the men of Southern 
France. He made the most of the history of his 
adventures, his achievements and the ill-treatment 
he had received from his government. Indeed, it 
would appear from his writings that this old-time 
o-overnor was a sort of ancient Tartarin de Tar- 
ascon, boastful, prevaricating, inefficient, but not 
wholly bad. 

And now came a new era in the checkered 
story of Louisiana. A dramatic figure appeared in 
France — John Law the Edinburgh "financier." 
A gambler and a speculator by nature notwith- 
standing his deceptively-prosaic name, this son of 
a Scotch banker became one of the most daring 
of adventurers. Drifting to France he essayed 
the role of capitalist, gained the friendship of the 
regent Orleans, and, rising rapidly in his strange 
financial career, rested not until he had fixed his ro- 
mantic hold upon the distressed treasury of France. 
His operations were shrewd though audacious, and 
his suQ^ofestions of relief came to the Q-overnment 
as those of "a friend in need." For France was in 
a desperate financial strait. Her treasury was 
empty, her provinces exhausted, her army unpaid. 



44 ^ PAPER ELDORADO. 

Corruption was wide-spread, and the official decla- 
ration that the nation was bankrupt had been seri- 
ously considered. Just then came Law's eieantic 
scheme of speculation, alluringly presented. It was, 
in effect, to monopolize to himself the foreign trade 
of France, and to make the nation the universal 
banker. In 1716 he succeeded in securing the 
right to establish a bank with a capital of six million 
livres, and so well did he manage the venture, that 
the Government a year later ordered that the notes 
of the bank should be taken as specie by the treas- 
ury. His next step was the forming of a Royal 
Bank, in lieu of the private one, and of this he 
had himself appointed Director-General. Meantime 
the Mississippi Company had been constituted on 
the sixth of September, 171 7. To it the regent 
had granted all the rights and privileges thereto- 
fore enjoyed by Crozat. Almost unlimited powers 
were secured by the Company in addition to those 
already granted, and France thus gave over into 
the hands of a private corporation for a space of 
twenty-five years the practical ownership of Lou- 
isiana. Law was appointed Director-General of 
this company also, and it was merged into the bank. 
Next he obtained control of various other com- 
panies, including one that enjoyed a monopoly of 
French trade in China, East Indies, and the South 
Seas; then the mint fell into his hands, and finally 



A PAPER ELDORADO. 45 

his remorseless monopoly clutched practically all 
the revenues of France. 

In those days everything romantic drifted toward 
Louisiana. Law, with the remarkable knowledge 
of human nature which had enabled him to suc- 
ceed thus far, now began a shrewd system of 
advertising, sure that he could compass his desire 
by appealing to the imagination of the people. 
His methods were essentially the same as those by 
which in our own day we see large ventures on the 
field of speculation rushed into public favor. He 
flooded the country with pamphlets and other docu- 
ments containing fervid descriptions of Louisiana : 
its incomparable climate, its inexhaustible mines, 
its rich soil, the endless variety and flowery loveli- 
ness of its plant-life, the abundance of its fish, its 
game, and its fur-bearing animals. Indeed, the 
territory was painted as one of boundless extent, 
and possessed of all the beauties and charms of an 
earthly paradise with the added value of more than 
Golconda riches lying ready for the hand of the 
adventurer. 

This elysium, this wild, romantic, wealth-burdened 
country was the basis of Law's dazzling and stupen- 
dous scheme. In effect he bonded it, as our railway 
syndicates bond the franchises of their roads. He 
made the wilderness of Louisiana the subject of an 
issue of stock watered to the last degree of dilution. 



4^ A PAPER ELDORADO. 

Socially and politically France was just then in a 
situation to render her people peculiarly subject 
to the insidious influence of this financial scheme. 
The government, as has been shown, was virtually 
bankrupt, and a system of ruinous extravao-ance 
begun by Louis XIV. was still in vogue under 
the regency of the Duke of Orleans. For a 
time repudiation and its consequences seemed to 
be the national destiny. Everybody was alarmed. 
Public and private credits were at the point of 
vanishing. 

Law's advertisements appeared just at the fort- 
unate moment, so far as his scheme was to be 
affected. It offered some reason for hope, and 
although at first there was difficulty in o-ainino- 
public confidence, the leaven of speculation was 
planted in the minds of the people and was sure 
to perform its work. 

It did this speedily. The shares of the Com- 
pany rose to forty times their nominal price. All 
France rushed to subscribe. "A sort of madness," 
says Mr. Watt, " possessed the nations. Men sold 
their all and hastened to Paris to speculate. The 
population of the capital was increased by an enor- 
mous influx of provincials and foreigners. Trade 
received a vast though unnatural impetus. Every 
one seemed to be getting richer, no one poorer." 

From the very first Law and his immediate 



A PAPER ELDORADO. 47 

colleao-ues must have foreseen that there was at 
that time but little in Louisiana upon which to 
base a great issue of credit ; in order, therefore, 
to make a show, no matter how deceptive, of a flour- 
ishino- condition of the colonies, it was necessary to 
effect a change in the administrations of the colo- 
nial affairs. With this object in view three vessels 
with sixty-nine colonists and three companies of 
infantry were dispatched to Louisiana. They 
landed on February 9, 1718, bringing to Bienville 
the commission of governor. This lifted him once 
more to his coveted place at the head of the people 
for whom he had suffered so much, and with whom 
he had struggled through good and bad report for 
nineteen years. 

Understanding the effect of sudden and brilliant 
moves. Law directed Bienville to seek forthwith a 
proper site for a town on the Mississippi River. 
His company was the Mississipi Company and the 
name would acquire greater force and significance 
with the seat of colonial government fixed at a 
commanding point on the famous stream. He 
wished to proclaim in France that wonderful pro- 
gress was going on in Louisiana, that towns were 
springing up as if by magic and that the mighty 
valley of the West was giving birth to an empire. 

Bienville, never so happy as when engaged in 
adventurous undertakings, made haste to enter the 



48 A PAPER ELDORADO. 

Mississippi, and was not long choosing the site for 
his town. 

Prior to this, under the administrations of Ca- 
dillac and L'Epinay, efforts which, viewed from 
this distance, look desperate, had been made to 
establish an overland route for trade with Mexico. 
St. Denis and others groped their way through 
Texas to the Mexican border, but their mission 
was as vain as it was romantic. At the end of 
their long, lonely and perilous journey they were 
robbed and imprisoned by the Spaniards. 

This policy of trading and smuggling, of gold- 
hunting and trafficking had the necessary effect 
of filling the colonies with the reckless and des- 
perate offscourings of France. Bienville in his 
despatches complained that the men sent to him 
were the worst criminals of the old country — men 
of the vilest propensities who cared for nothing but 
the most degrading licentiousness. True he had 
an influence over them which no other man had 
ever been able to secure, and, in a way, he was 
fond of them ; but their recklessness and lack of 
discipline vexed him and retarded his movements. 
When he received permission to establish a per- 
manent colony on the Mississippi a new hope 
sprang up in his heart. The site chosen for the 
proposed settlement was that now occupied by the 
city of New Orleans, and the excitement of the 



A FAFER ELDORADO. 49 

undertaking, which involved the laying out of a 
town and its fortifications, was sufficient to raise 
his spirits to something Hke their old buoyancy 
and intrepidity. 

On the seventeenth of March, 1719, a French 
war-ship bringing a hundred " passengers," reached 
Mobile, and on April the twentieth came three 
more with an hundred and thirty colonists. With 
these, too, came Serigny, brother of the governor, 
also Monsieur de Montplaissir who brought with 
him thirty persons to establish a tobacco manufac- 
tory, and, besides these, two hundred and fifty 
negroes — the first large importation of Africans 
made into Louisiana. But more important even 
than all this Serigny brought information that war 
had begun between Spain and France, and pre- 
sented an order for Bienville to go at once and 
capture Fensacola. 

Here was the beginning of a career. Bienville 
sprang with alacrity to the military task assigned to 
him and by the thirteenth of May he was ready to 
strike. His fleet consisted of the three war-vessels 
of the Mississippi Company recently arrived — the 
Philippe, the Comte de Toulouse, the Marechal de 
Villars — and a sloop, carrying two hundred and 
thirty men all told. With this force he sailed 
into Fensacola Bay and the place was surrendered 
to him without resistance. The prisoners taken 



50 A PAPER ELDORADO. 

were sent to Cuba in pursuance of the terms of 
surrender. 

Leavinof Pensacola in the care of his brother 
Chateauguay, Bienville returned to Mobile, while 
two of the vessels, the Comte de Toulouse and the 
Marechal de Villars, sailed for Havana bearing 
the Spanish prisoners. In perfect accord with 
the spirit of the time, the authorities of Cuba 
laughed at the idea of giving the slightest heed to 
the terms of an honorable agreement. Instead of 
permitting Bienville's vessels to return unmolested, 
the Viceroy of Mexico, the Marquis of Vallero, 
quickly manned them with Spanish soldiers and 
sent them back, along with a fleet of twelve vessels 
bearing eighteen hundred men, to retake and hold 
Pensacola. Of course the task was an easy one. 
Chateauguay surrendered on the best terms he 
could secure. The Spaniards were highly elated 
and thouoht to wioe out at a blow the whole French 
colony in Louisiana. With this purpose three 
brigantines of the fleet proceeded to Mobile Bay to 
take possession of Dauphine Island. The French 
were ill-prepared for an attack in force, but Serigny 
whom Bienville had placed in command of the 
island stoutly refused to surrender. 

The Spaniards under cover of night ran into the 
bay and landed a force of thirty-five men hoping to 
surprise and pillage a defenceless place midway 



A PAPER ELDORADO. 5^ 

between Mobile and Dauphine Island. But the 
surprise was their own, for a party of French and 
Indians suddenly fell upon them routing them 
completely, killing five, capturing eighteen and 
drivinc'- the others into the sea where six were 
drowned. 

As the best proof of the low state of morals in 
the French colonies at this time it is sufficient 
to note that among the prisoners taken in the 
skirmish just described were a number of French- 
men — deserters from the garrison left by Bienville 
at Pensacola. These were shot. 

This signal victory aroused the spirit of the 
little band on Dauphine Island and when the 
Spanish fleet a day or two later sailed into the bay 
and began an attack it was answered with a vigor 
that was wholly unexpected. Serigny showed great 
skill in arranging his defence. He anchored the 
ship Philippe close -to the shore so that the fire of 
her guns was supplemented by that of a battery on 
the island. The Spaniards tried in vain to land a 
force on the shore. They were repulsed at every 
point. They probably thought the French much 
stronger than they really were, for, after lingering 
around the island and idly firing at long range 
without effect, they withdrew on the twenty-sixth of 
Ausfust and sailed back to Pensacola. 

Almost immediately after this, on the first of 



g2 A PAPER ELDORADO. 

September, 17 19, three French ships of the line 
arrived at Mobile Bay bringing in some vessels 
with supplies from the Mississippi Company. The 
ships, which were well manned and equipped, were 
commanded by the Comte de Champmeslin, a naval 
officer of considerable ability, who at once pro- 
posed an attack on Pensacola. This was just what 
Bienville and his men most desired. A plan was 
therefore arranged by which a land force under the 
Governor was to act in concert with the fleet under 
the Comte de Champmeslin. Bienville, with an 
energy and activity scarcely equaled in the history 
of military operations, called together from widely 
scattered sources a little army of French and 
Indians which when marshaled numbered about 
seven hundred men. The main portion of these 
had been massed at a point on Perdido River 
whither Bienville went with a fleet of small boats 
bearin^y such a force as he could spare from the 
forts at Mobile and Dauphine Island. 

On the seventeenth of September all was ready. 
Champmeslin sailed boldly into Pensacola Bay and 
opened fire on the Rose Island fort, while Bienville 
marched against the post on the mainland. The 
whole movement was made with such celerity and 
secrecy that the Spaniards were taken by surprise 
and their forces separated. Their ships were at 
anchor close in to the mainland and their guns 



A PAPER ELDORADO. 53 

could not be used to effect in any direction. Rose 
Island fort was silenced at the end of two hours. 
Meantime Bienville had completely invested the 
fort on the high ground at Pensacola and was pour- 
ing into it a rattling fire from every side. The 
heavy guns of Admiral Champmeslin's ships were 
shaking the bay with their thunders and the Indians 
on shore were howling like mad beasts. It was a 
short but brilliant little fio^ht at the end of which 
the French found themselves a^jain full masters of 
Pensacola with eighteen hundred prisoners and 
a considerable store of provisions, ammunition and 
arms, as the reward of their action. But the place 
seemed fated to be destroyed. A strong fleet of 
Spanish men-of-war from Vera Cruz attacked it, 
and the French blew up the forts to prevent their 
capture. 

Louisiana was now harrassed in every direction 
by the insidious operations of Spanish emissaries 
among the savage tribes in the North and West. 
In Texas there were numerous Spanish posts and 
agencies from which as bases parties were sent out 
to incite the Indians to commit depredations upon 
the French colonies on the Arkansas, the Missouri 
and the upper Mississippi. In the year 1720 a 
force was organized at Santa Fe for the purpose 
of operating in the Missouri region. It was well 
equipped with horses and domestic herds, and was 



54 



A PAPER ELDORADO. 



bountifully supplied with arms and ammunition. 
The plan was to plant colonies and at the same time 
drive out the French from all the upper part of the 
o-reat territory. Men, women and children, soldiers, 
colonists and priests, all marched together through 
that grand wilderness until they reached the coun- 
try of the Missouris where they were foolish enough 
to furnish fire-arms to the savages with the under- 
standing that they were to become their allies. 
The Missouris, not less treacheorus than the Span- 
iards, promptly turned their new weapons to good 
account by murdering all the caravan, save one 
priest who returned to Santa Fe to tell the woful 

story. 

From Boisbriant, among the Illinois (to whom the 
tidines had been told by certain Illinois " who had 
come to chant the calumet bedecked in chasubles 
and stoles") news of this expedition reached the 
ears of Bienville. He felt at once the necessity 
for prompt action. For a long while he had been 
urging upon the Company the policy of removing 
the seat of territorial government to some point 
on the banks of the Mississippi River. The move- 
ments of the Spaniards gave irresistible force to his 
argument, and when the royal engineer, M. Pauger, 
examined the place selected for the site of New 
Orleans and reported favorably, the Company con- 
sented to have its principal depot established there. 



A PAPER ELDORADO. 57 

The Spaniards continued their depredations in 
Texas and forced the P^'ench to abandon most of 
the territory west of the Sabine River. La Harpe 
had been sent to take possession of St. Bernard 
Bay, but after landing and establishing a post he 
felt compelled to abandon it as unsafe. Bienville 
insisted upon a policy of concentration and con- 
tinued to urge upon the Company the importance 
of establishing agricultural colonies instead of 
wasting further time in fruitless wanderings after 
eold and silver mines. 

Meantime emio:rants continued to come from 
France. Of these the greater part were adven- 
turers, convicts and refugees from justice. Many 
of the women added to the colony were from the 
houses of correction in Paris, and were sent over 
by the Government's order. Thus, though the 
population increased, there was but small improve- 
ment in its moral condition. 

The Company had asked the government of 
France to make ofrants of land in Louisana to 
various influential persons upon condition that the 
areas granted should be colonized. This was done. 
John Law himself was one of these grantees, his 
portion being a plot twelve miles square on the 
Arkansas. By means of these liberal grants nu- 
merous settlements were effected in the territory 
now occupied by the States of Arkansas, Louisiana, 



58 A PAPER ELDORADO. 

Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, as well as cer- 
tain portions of the region farther north. But the 
advice of Bienville had not been heeded. Agricult- 
ure had not kept pace with the increase of popula- 
tion, consequently famine threatened. France was 
beginning to orather the destructive fruit of Law's 
wild financial schemes, and the bubble of a specious 
credit blown to the utmost tenuity by his breath 
was preparing to burst. The Company, embarassed 
to the last degree, clutched at straws and struggled 
desperately in the effort to revive its sinking fort- 
une. As a matter of course trouble to the Com- 
pany meant trouble to the dependent colonies of 
France, compelled to look to the mother country 
for supplies. And now these supplies began to fail. 
The advertising pamphlets, circulars and romantic 
reports of the Company's agents no longer satisfied 
the people of France and it was growing daily more 
difficult to hold the scheme together. 

Bienville showed himself worthy of the trust 
reposed in him. Through all that dark time his 
thouQ^hts never turned from the details of his difH- 
cult task. He pushed forward the buildings at 
New Orleans and was soon able to report the 
founding of a town which was to be the metropolis 
of the great Mississippi Valley, 

In the meantime Fort Chartres in the Illinois 
country had been begun on the river twenty-five 



A PAPER ELDORADO. 59 

miles below Kaskaskia; Lc Sueur had erected a 
fort far up on St. Peter's River, and Fort Orleans 
had been established on the Missouri. Thus at 
the beginning of the year 1720 the whole of Upper 
Louisiana was well fortified and safely held in the 
o-rasp of the French. Boisbriant, who was stationed 
as lieutenant for the governor in the Illinois country, 
had under his charge a contented agricultural colony, 
ao-o-reo-atino- some two thousand white residents, and 
comprising at least five prosperous villages. Not- 
withstanding the embarrassments of the Company, 
the whole territory west to the Colorado was re- 
duced to possession, after the fashion of the tmies, 
though no permanent settlements were made in the 
Texas region west of the Sabine River. 

Bienville continued to urge forward every possi- 
ble scheme for the encouragement of agriculture. 
Neo-roes were imported in considerable numbers, 
plantations were opened on the rich alluvial " coasts " 
of the Mississippi and its tributaries and the true 
wealth of Louisiana was beginning to appear in the 
very midst of utter depression and poverty. The 
soil was, and still is, the richest in the world, and 
it required but a mere garden plot to produce 
enouo-h for the wants of a family. The climate, 
moreover, was of a character to render subsist- 
ence a matter of small effort. Shelter from the 
rain was the only requirement in making a house, 



6o A PAPER ELDORADO. 

and the Indians taught the settlers how to build 
with the least expense. 

The first really successful tillers of the soil in 
the vicinity of New Orleans were a company of 
Proven9al peasants who abandoned their homes on 
Law's grant and came down the river intent upon 
going back to their old country. It was thought 
advisable to detain them, for their reappearance in 
France would have given rise to unpleasant inquir- 
ies. So they were induced to remain by granting 
them a large body of the very richest Mississippi 
coast lands just above New Orleans. 

Thus the affairs of Louisiana progressed until 
suddenly the inevitable happened. The " South 
Sea Bubble " burst and the schemes by which John 
Law sought to bolster up a losing speculation all 
went " agley." Disaster and confusion swept the 
victimized land of France and thousands were 
plunged into distress and ruin. Law fell from the 
height of success to the depths of failure. " The 
public wrath and indignation," says Guizot, " fast- 
ened henceforth upon Law, the author and director 
of a system which had given rise to so many hopes 
and had been the cause of so many woes." He 
became an object of hatred where he had before 
been envied and courted. Even the " rash infatu- 
ation " of the Regent could no longer protect him. 
His carriage was knocked to pieces in the streets. 



A PAPER ELDORADO. 6 1 

Ruined in fortune and in reputation he fled in dis- 
o-race from liis enraged dupes and died at Venice, 
in 1729, poor and forgotten. The failure of his 
" Company " meant disaster for the colony across 
the sea, but Louisiana, fortunately, had already 
made a progress that promised permanence and 
though this progress was discouragingly slow it had 
been steady and was in the right direction. 



CHAPTER III. 



IN THE DAYS OF BIENVILLE. 




HEN Charle- 
voix visited 
New Orleans 
in J a n u a r y, 
1722, he found 
that all the 
stories of its rapid growth, its 
'^? wealth, its beauty and its com- 
' mandins: situation had been 

greatly exaggerated. In his journal, which con- 
tains a quaint and graphic account of a voyage he 
made down the Illinois and the Mississippi, he says : 
" I am at length arrived in this noted city to 
which they have given the name La Nouvelle 
Orleans. Those who have thus named it, supposed 
that Orleans was feminine ; but what of it ? Cus- 
tom has fixed it, and custom overtops grammar s 
rules. This is the first city that one of the world's 
miorhtiest rivers has seen arise on its banks." Then 
he goes on to say that, instead of finding eight 
hundred fine houses and five parishes, as was 

63 



IN THE DAYS OF BIENVILLE. 63 

represented l^y the newspapers two years before, 
he sees a hundred barracks, rather disorderly in 
arrangement, a large wooden storehouse and other 
thincTs in accordance. It was "a wild and desert 
place almost covered with reeds and trees," but he 
predicted its future greatness as the capital of a 
wealthy and powerful colony. 

Father Charlevoix was a Jesuit priest of high 
character whose life w^as spent in traveling, execu- 
ting important missions and writing history. He 
was a shrewd and accurate observer, as observation 
went in those days, and his journals are full of the 
most valuable facts. On his way down the Missis- 
sippi he stopped at Natchez and remained there 
some days, besides making visits to the forts at 
Yazoo and other points farther up the river. It 
is from him that we get the best impression of 
truth regarding the debased condition of the colo- 
nists. He found the marriage relation very loosely 
adjusted — a result that was scarcely surprising in 
view of the class of persons attracted to the new 
land and the peculiar methods of supplying the 
matrimonial deficiencies of the colony. Religious 
ceremonies he declared were scarcely observed at 
all. What he says about the notorious schemer 
Law, is significant. " Mr. Law was treated badly, 
as were most of the other grantees," he remarks ; 
"probably it will be a great while ere they can 



64 IN THE DAYS 01 BIENVILLE. 

make such large levies of men (referring to the 
failure of a scheme of immigration from France). 
They have need of them in the kingdom ; and in 
fact it is usual for us to form our judgments by the 
success of such undertakings, in place of noting 
what was the source of their failure." In speaking 
of the canton of Natchez, he says, "It is five years 
since mass has been heard here by any Frenchman, 
or since one has even seen a priest." He met 
at Natchez the royal engineer, M. de Pauger, who 
was surveying the river with a view to establishing 
forts. 

It was about this time that the collapse of Law's 
gigantic plan began to make its effect on the very 
foundations of the colonies. The settlements on 
the Arkansas, at Washita and at Fort St. Peter, 
were reduced to a state bordering on starvation, 
and, as we have noted, those on Law's own grant 
came down the Mississippi and were cared for at 
New Orleans by a grant of what was afterwards 
known as the German Coast. 

Bienville suffered all the agony possible to an 
ambitious man who waits and hopes in vain for a 
substantial recoonition of his merits and achieve- 
ments. At one time he fell very ill, so that for a 
long time his death was expected every day. His 
malady, it was said, came of brooding and fretting 
over the ill-treatment he received at the hands of 



IN THE DAYS OF BIENVILLE. 65 

the Company and from the Government of France ; 
but this statement may be taken with liberal allow- 
ance. The city of New Orleans even at this day 
is badly drained and subject to occasional epidem- 
ics, although in a general way extremely healthy ; 
but w^hat must have been its sanitary condition 
in its season of beginning when its few log huts 
and scattered barracks stood in the midst of stag- 
nant ponds, cypress swamps and dense, dank cane- 
brakes ? Slow fevers of a bilious or malarial type 
were common all along the Mississippi then, as 
now, and in the hot season yellow fever was fre- 
quently imported from Mexico and the Antilles. 

In 1723 a change was made in the government of 
Louisiana. Up to this time the territory had been 
subject to the jurisdiction of Canada. Now it was 
made independent and its area was divided into nine 
parts, or parishes, each of which was to be governed 
by a commandant assisted by a judge. Bienville 
was governor and commandant-general ; but he was 
hampered by the presence of a king's lieutenant and 
by a director-general of the Company; his authority 
too was sadly embarrassed by the insubordination 
of the commandants of the districts. 

The gold fever was still burning in the blood of 
the colonists, and the search for mines supposed to 
exist in the Illinois region was of far more interest 
then were the laborious processes of agricultural 



66 IN THE DAYS OF BIENVILLE. 

progress. The policy of the Company added fuel 
to this insidious fire, and although the Indians all 
alono- the river were growing more and more dis- 
satisfied, scarcely any attention was paid to their 
threatening movements. Suddenly the Natchez 
tribe uprose and massacred some of the settlers on 
the St. Catherine, following this with an attack in 
force on the plantations killing a number and carry- 
ing away horses, cattle, hogs and grain. Bienville, 
fully aware of the danger now impending, made 
haste to use his unscrupulous diplomacy on the 
Indian leaders. Securing an interview the French 
ofificers made peace on terms which were ratified 
by the governor, and the chiefs well satisfied went 
away feeling secure. 

But no sooner were the Indians off their guard 
than Bienville gathered a force of seven hundred 
men and secretly occupied Fort Rosalie. Thence 
he marched upon the neighboring villages and 
began a furious onslaught, killing, burning, and 
ravaging without mercy. When the Indians sued 
for peace he demanded that their leading chief be 
surrendered to him. This was finally done and the 
savage was brutally executed. After this outrage 
peace was no longer possible. The Indians nursed 
their wrath and pondered over plans for heaping 
dire punishment upon their enemies. Nor were they 
wroncT in so doing. With all faith destroyed, with 



IN THE DAYS OF BIENVILLE. 69 

every sacred promise of the French broken as soon 
as made, with their plantations in ruins and their 
homes in ashes, with the blood of their wives and 
children, their braves and their chiefs crying to 
them for vengeance, it was indeed time for them 
to strike. Nevertheless they acted with great pru- 
dence and caution, their resentment for the time 
manifesting itself more in the reserve and gloom 
of their demeanor than in acts of violence. 

Father Charlevoix had seen what he called wild 
indigo growing on the banks of the Mississippi, 
and he shrewdly observed that a soil which would 
sustain the wild plant might be made to produce 
any variety of indigo if but the seeds were planted. 
The experiment was tried with the excellent result 
of founding a new and remunerative industry in 
the colonies. 

At the close of the year 1723, there had been 
imported into the territory within the Mississippi 
Valley a large number of negro slaves, between 
four and five thousand settlers and a hundred and 
forty galley slaves. Agriculture was growing rap- 
idly in importance as its value developed. At lasr, 
if only by a few, the great truth was discovered 
that the gold mines of Louisiana lay hidden in the 
fertile alluvions of the so-called coasts of her rivers, 
creeks and bayous, and that the plough and the hoe 
were the keys to the lightly-locked treasure. There 



70 IN THE DAYS OF BIENVILLE. 

remained but two great barriers for the colonies to 
overcome before they could reach the safe ground 
of prosperity in their career of development. These 
were the financial troubles caused by the Company's 
embarrassments, and the half-hidden but deep-set 
hostility of the Indians due to a long series of in- 
sults heaped upon injuries of the most heartless and 
revolting kind. The use of an enormously inflated 
paper currency had on one hand driven all the 
specie out of the colonies, whilst on the other hand 
it had filled everybody's pockets with a roll of 
money which purported to represent wealth when 
in fact it was utterly without value. Every species 
of property commanded an enormous price ; specu- 
lation was indulged in to a reckless degree ; gam- 
bling and debauchery of every sort were openly 
practiced by many, and indeed the color of colonial 
life was caught almost wholly from the feverish 
spirit which is always engendered by a dishonest 
management of a government's finances. 

Suddenly the bubble burst and the paper cur- 
rency fell in value to a point which was much 
nearer safety ; but everybody was in debt, and as 
money became scarce the difficulty of payment was 
increased. Specie was demanded, dollar for dollar, 
upon outstanding contracts, and for a time there 
appeared to be nothing but annihilation in store 
for the colonies. And so the darkest day of 



IN THE DAYS OF BIENVILLE. 7 1 

Louisiana's life, from the first settlement up to 
1725, fell just at the time when hope had begun 
to rise in the breasts of the people. But happily 
the irloom was of short duration. The French 
government came to the rescue with the only plan 
which could have served the turn of the troubled 
debtors in the colonies. By edicts of the King of 
France Mexican silver dollars were made the cir- 
culating medium in Louisiana. The value of the 
dollar was arbitrarily fixed at seven and a half 
livres, whereas custom heretofore had made it four 
livres. This change was life to the debtor, but it 
was a species of robbery in the estimation of the 
speculating creditor. It did infinite good, how- 
ever, rapidly wiping out the debts of the colonists 
and, in a degree, restoring the equilibrium of trade. 
Then came another edict returning to the Mexican 
dollar its ancient value of four livres. By this 
manipulation of the currency the colonies were, in 
less than a year's space, zigzagged back to trade 
based on specie. 

Bienville now had the satisfaction of seeing pros- 
perity begin in Louisiana, though the gold fever 
still continued to burn, and the Indians, nursing 
their enmity, kept up a desultory fight with the 
settlers in the districts of the north. 

In the beginning of the year 1726 the entire 
territory was in a prosperous condition and the 



72 IN THE DAYS OF BIENVILLE. 

area devoted to agriculture had been doubled and 
trebled, whilst New Orleans had been springing 
rapidly into a very picturesque, if not very elegant 
town. The Company made arrangements for still 
further improvement in the condition of the colo- 
nies, by the introduction of religious and educational 
influences. Priests and nuns were imported, and a 
better class of emigrants were brought from Canada 
and France. 

Just at this point of time, when all was bright 
and encouraging, and when the worst evils appeared 
to be passing away from the people of Louisiana, 
Bienville was superseded by M. Perier, a man of 
excellent abilities, who at once entered with great 
energy upon the performance of his duties. 

It is worthy of note that, from the very first, the 
American air has had the quality of engendering 
a love of liberty in the hearts of those who have 
breathed it. Valdeterre, writing of the colonies of 
Louisiana as an eye witness in 1726, uses the fol- 
lowing remarkable language upon the subject of 
their independence of spirit: — 

"The inhabitants of this country, settled here so 
recently, governed by the Company, instead of in 
the name of the king, have come to be republicans 
in their thoughts and ways and look upon them- 
selves as exempt from binding allegiance to their 
soverei2:n." 



IN THE DAYS OF BIENVILLE, 73 

Perier advanced the interests of the province 
with great rapidity. Indigo, rice, tobacco, wheat, 
corn and domestic animals were produced in abun- 
dance, and tropical fruits were beginning to be 
cultivated. 

Under all this gratifying prosperity, however, 
was a smoldering fire of destruction. The Natchez 
Indians had not forgiven nor forgotten the massacre 
of their people and the destruction of their planta- 
tions. They were sullenly biding their time to rise 
and strike their enemies to the heart. 

All went well on the surface of things until 
the twenty-ninth of November, 1729, when like a 
thunderbolt the blow fell. 

Bienville during the whole of his administration 
had urged upon the Company the pressing need 
of military precautions in view of the number and 
disposition of the savages ; but his advice had 
been thrust aside. No sooner was Perier installed 
than he renewed Bienville's recommendations with 
great emphasis. He too was refused the aid he 
asked. 

Over in Carolina the English traders were reach- 
ing far westward into the country of the Chickasaws, 
and their influence for a long time had kept that 
tribe unfriendly to the French ; but a great con- 
spiracy between them and several other tribes, with 
a view to overrunning Louisiana, came to naught. 



74 IN THE DA YS OF BIENVILLE. 

The Natchez, however, matured their plans with 
the greatest caution and foresight. 

Chopart, who was in command at Fort Rosalie, 
appears to have been a man of overbearing disposi- 
tion, despotic, merciless and avaricious, who treated 
the Indians with the most brutal cruelty. A chief 
or " sun " of the Natchez, who lived on a beautiful 
and extensive plantation called White Apple, which 
was tilled by the people of a scattered village built 
thereon, was ordered by Chopart to abandon his 
home, take with him his people and his houses, 
destroy his fields and go elsewhere. The only jus- 
tification for the order lay in the fact that Chopart 
desired to own the rich and beautiful plantation 
himself. Of course the chief refused to obey so 
preposterous a command. " My fathers," he said 
with dignity, "have occupied that spot for many 
years, and it is well for their children to remain 
there." Chopart threatened force and the chief 
called a council to devise means for averting the 
impending calamity. A treaty ended in the Indians 
accepting terms by which Chopart was to receive 
a certain rental from the savages during a respite 
of a few months which he condescended to grant 
to them. 

This was the beginning of the end. Death w^as 
far preferable, the Indians felt, to permitting the 
white man, in his avarice and brutal arrogance, to 



IN THE DAYS OF BIENVILLE. 75 

take possession of their lands and their homes. 
They had not forgotten the perfidy of Bienville, 
nor were the old bloodstains of the wholesale mas- 
sacre committed a few years before by the French 
yet grown dim in their memory. In secret council 
they, formed a plan to destroy the whole French 
colony. Emissaries were dispatched to all the 
villao-es of the Natchez and to those of other tribes 
with whom they had formed an alliance. Their 
method of keeping accurate and uniform count of 
the time until the day agreed upon for the uprising 
was as picturesque as it was simple. A bundle of 
reeds containing a certain number of stems was 
sent to each village with instructions to remove a 
reed at sunrise every morning, and when but one 
reed remained that would signify that the day of 
vengeance had arrived. The order was : Draw 
the last reed and rush at once upon the nearest 
French settlement with fire and tomahawk. Not 
a soul among all the whites was to be spared. 

Meantime the Indians paid the rental or tribute 
demanded by Chopart and appeared to be perfectly 
submissive. One by one the reeds were withdrawn 
until the last slender stem awaited its turn. The 
day of wrath had dawned, but the French were 
ignorant of the fate prepared for them and went 
about their routine of duties and pleasures as 
usual. 



76 IN THE DAYS OF BIENVILLE. 

With a number of picked warriors, apparently 
unarmed, but bearing concealed weapons, the chief 
or " Great Sun " of the Indians near Fort Rosalie 
entered the post with poultry and other produce 
which he offered to barter for ammunition. The 
cjarrison of Fort Rosalie felt no fear of defenceless 
Indians, and so the warriors were allowed to enter 
the fortifications. Quietly they scattered them- 
selves about and watched for the signal of their 
chief. It was soon Q;iven. With the furv of wild 
beasts hungry for blood, the warriors fell upon 
their unsuspecting victims and killed all within 
their reach. At the same time in every direction 
slaughter was begun and before sunset the en- 
tire male population of the settlements near Fort 
Rosalie had been destroyed. Houses were burned, 
plantations pillaged and the whole region left a 
smoking, blood-covered desolation. 

The "Great Sun," while this was going on, 
smoked his pipe in stoical unconcern. The shrieks 
and groans of the dying, the cries of the women 
and children, all of whom were taken prisoner, and 
the roaring of flames made music that lulled the 
grim old warrior's soul. He sat in the principal 
warehouse of the post while his braves brought the 
heads of the slain and laid them in a ghastly pile at 
his feet; those of the officers and men formed the 
base of this horrible pyramid, at the apex of which 



JN THE DAYS OF BIENVILLE. "]-] 

and crowning the work was placed the hated head 
of the miscreant Chopart. 

Their direful vengeance accomphshed, the In- 
dians possessed themselves of the wine and brandy 
in the stores of Fort Rosalie and forthwith began 
a wild debauch which ended only when the sup- 
ply of spirits was exhausted. They danced, and 
chanted their war-songs, they screamed and bel- 
lowed and gesticulated, finally lying down in a 
drunken stupor among the headless bodies of 
their foes. They spared most of the negroes for 
use on their own plantations. 

On the Yazoo, on the Washita, and at the settle- 
ment near the present site of Monroe, the colonists 
were all killed. More than two hundred men died 
at the hands of the savages on that bloody and 
long-remembered day. More than two hundred 
and fifty women and children were taken captive. 

It was by such an example that the Company 
was shown the truth of Bienville's arguments. The 
necessity for prompt military action was very evi- 
dent, now that two hundred of the best men in 
Louisiana lay rotting on the field of massacre so 
often predicted by the deposed governor. 

Perier forthwith dispatched a vessel to France 
with an account of the horrible butchery and de- 
manding soldiers and supplies. Meantime orders 
were sent to the commanders of all the posts of the 



78 IN THE DAYS OF BIENVILLE. 

territory bidding them make ready for war. Forti- 
fications were built around New Orleans, the in- 
habitants were armed, and couriers and agents were 
sent to all the Indian tribes that were on friendly 
terms with the French, with a view to enlisting 
them against the Natchez and their allies. There 
was no lack of military precaution, now that the 
blow had fallen. 

Le Sueur went up into the Choctaw country on 
the Tombigbee to raise an army of that tribe, while 
a force of six hundred men marched from New 
Orleans. An insurrection broke out among the 
slaves on some of the plantations, just at this crit- 
ical moment, but it was speedily quelled. 

Le Sueur gathered a body of six hundred Choc- 
taw braves and by a hurried march was upon the 
Natchez before they were aware of his movement. 
Just at daybreak on a January morning in the year 
1730 the allied French and Choctaws fell upon the 
Natchez villages, and a desperate fight ensued. 
But though severely punished the Natchez were by 
no means broken. They were peculiarly gifted in 
their own rude art of constructing defences. With 
much skill and speed they at once built a strong 
fortification and awaited the approach of the French 
from New Orleans. Le Sueur's band of Choctaws 
had returned to their tribe. 

The Chevalier Loubois with the six hundred 



I 



IN THE DAYS OF BIENVILLE. -J^ 

New Orleans troops of Le Sueur, reinforced by 
eight hundred more, including Indians, reached the 
Natchez fortification in a few days and began a 
systematic investment of the place. Trenches were 
opened, batteries planted at commanding points 
and a regular siege begun. The Indians, seeing 
that they would probably be taken, asked for a par- 
ley and obtained a suspension of hostilities for ten 
days upon condition that they would surrender to 
the French the two hundred prisoners they were 
holding. During: this cessation of hostilities the 
Indians on the night of the twenty-fifth of Febru- 
ary stole out of their fort and escaped leaving the 
prisoners as they had promised. 

M. Loubois now proceeded to build the new Fort 
Rosalie (afterward so famous in southwestern story) 
on the bluff below the site of the present city of 
Natchez. The remains of this old-time stronghold 
may still be traced on the brink of the Mississippi 
bluff where it was built a century and a half ago. 
Its walls could tell of occupancy by the garrisons 
of four nations, for over its ramparts, during its 
seventy years of use as a defensive outpost, floated 
the flags of France and Spain, of England and the 
United States. It was finally abandoned in 1800. 

The Natchez now scattered themselves and were 
never again an independent tribe. A large num- 
ber of them, however, established themselves in a 



8o IN THE DA YS OF BIENVILLE. 

fort on Black River just below the confluence of 
Little River and Washita. They built strong in- 
trenchments and prepared to defend the place with 
that wonderful courage which has made the Natchez 
name a deathless one in the annals of Indian hero- 
ism. Savages those men were, but patriotism never 
has risen to a higher level of self-sacrificing devo- 
tion than was registered by their unswerving forti- 
tude and their serene and desperate valor. 

M. Perier well knew that extermination was the 
only means of freeing the colonies in Louisiana 
from the incubus of that deadly terror of the red- 
man which had fixed itself upon them. Every 
man, woman and child throughout the settlements 
was haunted with visions of bloody massacre and 
of death by slow fire at the stake. Labor was 
paralyzed and trade on the Mississippi virtually 
destroyed. 

In the meantime the English in Carolina were 
busily engaged in encouraging hostility to the 
French among the Chickasaws, Creeks and Chero- 
kees. Rumors of this reached the French early in 
the year 1731. Their alarm increased. The dis- 
trust in everything Indian extended even to the 
eovernor himself and moved him to a deed of blood 
that had neither palliation nor excuse. Determined 
to " make an example " that should be heeded by 
his Indian foes Perrier ordered the extermination 




DEAIH I'D THI:: NATCHEZ ! 



I 



JX THE DAYS OF BIENVILLE. '^'i^ 

of the Chouacas, a weak band of absolutely harm- 
less Indians living below New Orleans in the 
region of Lake Barataria. His excuse for this 
cowardly move was that he believed the Chouacas 
to be in alliance with the Chickasaws. But as if 
such a deed of perfidy could enlist in its behalf no 
chivalrous or lionorable Frenchman this act of des- 
perate folly was delegated to a force of armed negro 
slaves gathered from the plantations and carefully 
drilled for the work of butchery. The Indians were 
entirely defenceless; they were without thought of 
harming any one or of being harmed themselves, 
when suddenly the black cloud of slaves fell upon 
them, as if driven by a tempest of death itself, and 
wrought a merciless and indiscriminate slaughter 
of men, women and children. It must be remem- 
bered tliat these neo^roes were themselves savao:es 
imported quite recently from their African haunts. 
One cannot imagine an act of more abject barbarity 
than this brutal massacre planned by a so-called 
Christian and executed by a mob of degraded 
heathen. It seems but a losfical return for such 
" Christian " perfidy that the very mob of slaves 
to whom had been committed this butchery of 
defenceless women and children should have com- 
bined, because of this success, against their white 
masters and abettors and soon after their murder 
of the poor Chouacas planned the massacre of the 



§4 IN THE DAYS OP BIENVILLE. 

white colonists and the plunder of the settlements. 
The plot was discovered almost on the eve of its 
inception. 

Elated with his fine " success " against one 
" rebellious " tribe M. Perier now went forward 
with great energy. He raised an army with which 
to strike the stronghold of the Natchez rem- 
nant on Black River, and by the close of the 
year 1731 he had collected a force of six hundred 
and fifty men. On the fifteenth of November he 
marched northward, receiving reinforcements of 
Indians friendly to the French. His combined 
force thus amounted to about a thousand men. 
Reachinor the mouth of Black River and ascend- 
ing the stream in a fleet of small boats, the army 
reached the Natchez fort and began to lay siege 
thereto on the twentieth of January, 1732. Next 
day a bombardment was opened. Notwithstand- 
ing their well-planned defences, the fortifications of 
the Natchez were not calculated to withstand the 
destructive artillery of France and the Indians were 
soon forced to sue for quarter. A flag of truce 
was, indeed, hung out before the artillery had 
really done serious damage to the works. Perier 
demanded the surrender of all the Indian leaders, 
but this was refused and he ordered the cannon- 
ade to begin. The Indians then gave up their 
" Great Sun " and a war chief ; but Perier would 



AV THE DAYS OF BIENVILLE. 85 

listen to notliing short of a delivery into his hands 
of all their leadinii men. This the Indians a2:ain 
refused and the bombardment was reopened at once. 
Ni"ht was now fallinor and soon there arose one of 
those tempests of wind and rain common to the 
mid-winters of the Lower Mississippi. It was very 
dark, water came down in a deluge, the gale was 
almost a hurricane. In the midst of this tumult 
and darkness, rain and wind, the Indians, renewing 
the tactics of a former occasion, crept out of their 
fort and stole away through the swampy forests. 
Pursuit was made and some of them captured, 
but the main body escaped. 

Among the Natchez captives taken by Perier 
were the " Great Sun " and a number of the princi- 
pal war chiefs of the tribe. A terrible fate was in 
store for these couraoreous and freedom-lovino- men. 
They were shipped to St. Domingo and sold into 
all the horrors of West Indian slavery. 

One last struggle was made by the Natchez 
remnant. The}^ gathered a band of about two 
hundred warriors and attacked Fort Natchitoches 
which was occupied by St. Denis with a small gar- 
rison of French. The Indians were repulsed with 
heavy loss, whereupon they attacked and destroyed 
a village of the Natchitoches and proceeded to for- 
tify themselves on the spot. St. Denis did not let 
them long enjoy their new quarters. He was a 



86 JN THE DA YS OF BIENVILLE. 

fighting man and possessed of great courage, tact 
and energy. Promptly organizing his men and 
o:atherino; reinforcements he marched to attack the 
fort which he carried by storm, putting to death 
ninety-two of its defenders and giving the finishing 
blow to the almost complete destruction of the once 
great Natchez tribe. 

In all the long story of the ill-treatment of the 
American Indian there is scarcely an instance that 
exceeds in disgraceful details this record of the 
decline of the Natchez, " the most civilized of all the 
southern nations." With many marks of refinement 
and of gentle ways, brave, courteous, friendly and 
peculiarly adapted to the better processes of civili- 
zation they were from the first despised, juggled with 
and maligned. Pushed to extremities their patriot- 
ism and their valor alike made them relentless and 
bitter foemen and they fought valiantly for their 
homeland until French "diplomacy" and French 
gunpowder wrought their ruin and their death. 

On the tenth of April, 1732, the proclamation of 
the French king was issued declaring the territory 
of Louisiana open and free to all his subjects, the 
Company having surrendered its franchises to the 
crown. 

Under the new order of things M. Perier re- 
tained his position, with M. Salmon as commissaire 
ordonnateur. Loubois and D'Artaguette were 



IN THE DAYS OF BIENVILLE. ^J 

promoted to the office of king's lieutenants, Loubois 
remaining in Louisiana whilst D'Artaguette took 
charge of the Illinois territory. 

Thus, at the close of 1732, the French colonies 
in Louisiana became in fact, and for the first time, 
a people with a government free, at least in name, 
from the insidious influences of a commercial cor- 
poration whose highest aim had been to reap a 
eolden harvest from the labors of the settlers. 

Peace had come with the extermination of the 
Natchez and a feeling of security and hope had 
taken the place of that dark terror which so lately 
had hung over the whole territory. 

New Orleans was now placed in circumstances 
which gave great impetus to its growth and 
prosperity. By an order dated the thirteenth of 
September the king removed all duties from mer- 
chandise going from France to Louisiana and 
from Louisiana to France, thus establishing free 
trade between the territory and the mother 
country. Moreover the circulating medium of 
Louisiana was becoming more stable and the 
trade of New Orleans was attracting the atten- 
tion of the mercantile world. 



CHAPTER IV. 



FROM FRANCE TO SPAIN. 




'OT long after 
the Company 
had abandoned 
Louisiana, and 
while yet the 
people were re- 
joicing over the bright pros- 
pect of peace and happiness 
which had dawned upon 
the colonies, Bienville re- 
turned from his long stay 
in France. He came, in the fall of 1734, as gov- 
ernor and commandant-general of Louisiana. He 
was welcomed most cordially. The "Father of 
the Colony " had always been a favorite with the 
people, whilst Perier, though an excellent officer, 
had been harsh, willful and despotic in his treat- 
ment of his subordinates and in his intercourse 
with the settlers. 

But the new administration of Bienville though 
begun under the happiest auspices ended in dis- 



FROM FRANCE TO SPAIN. 89 

grace. The veteran governor was now quite past 
the prime of life, but he no sooner felt the reins 
of control once more in his hands, than he began 
to look about for a chance to achieve further 
renown as an Indian fighter. The Chickasaws 
offered him an excellent excuse for action. They 
had incorporated within their tribes the remnant 
of the destroyed Natchez nation and having allied 
themselves with certain Carolina traders were com- 
mitting many outrages along the Mississippi. By 
their restless energy navigation of the river was 
no longer safe, nor was trade on its borders profit- 
able. These hostile red-men had their strong- 
hold near what is now Pontotoc on the banks of a 
small stream of that name in the northern part of 
Mississippi near the source of the Tallahatchee 
River, To this lonely and distant point Bienville 
led an army composed of all the available men in 
the colonies of Louisiana and all the friendly 
Indians that he could enlist in his behalf. He 
had ordered D'Artaguette, son of the Chevalier 
D'Artaguette, a brave and intrepid youth, to march 
from Fort Chartres with all the force at his com- 
mand in the Illinois country and meet him at a 
point between the Yazoo and the Tombigbee, 
and near their sources in the upper part of 
Alabama. 

It was on the fourth day of May, 1736, that 



go FROM FRANCE TO SPAIN. 

Bienville departed from Fort Tombigbee. This 
stronghold he had just built on the bank of the 
Tombigbee River as a base for his operations. He 
led to the attack the largest army that ever had 
been raised in Louisiana and with high anticipa- 
tions he now marched forth to assail the stronp-hold 
of his enemy. 

By some mischance D'Artaguette failed to 
arrive at the appointed time and place and Bien- 
ville's troops would not be restrained. The Indian 
fqrt was found to be a very strong one. Indeed it 
had been built under the direction of the English 
traders. Not only a heavy palisade but powerful 
earthworks as well presented themselves on every 
side, while inside of the palisades was a wall of 
boards or slabs. Through these defences port- 
holes had been cut at short intervals, and all around 
the defences overhead there was a grenade-proof 
extension of wood and earth. 

Instead of investing the place and laying siege 
to it by gradual approaches Bienville made a mad 
effort to carry it by storm. No doubt he was exas- 
perated at seeing the British flag floating over the 
palisades, for in those davs of feud the siq-ht of 
England's banner on what was deemed French soil 
was at once an insult and a challenq;e to French 
honor. Then too the doughty commandant could 
scarcely have been aware of the great advance that 



FROM FRANCE TO SPAIN. 9 1 

tlie Indians had made in the art of war since the 
days when, as a youthful adventurer, he had 
chari^ed over their puny defences, or struck terror 
into their hearts by the roar of his guns and the 
flash of his grenades. 

Schooled in their experience of the white man's 
ways and directed no doubt by the English traders 
within the forts, the besieged Chickasaws gave shot 
for shot. As Bienville's men rushed forward to the 
assault they were met by a level storm of bullets 
directed by cool-headed and skilled marksmen. 
The effect was terrible, but the brave Frenchmen 
pressed right on close to the face of the works, only 
to find that it was impossible to break over. The 
artful manner in which the defences had been 
constructed, was now demonstrated. The hand 
grenades of the Frenchmen could make no im- 
pression upon them. Meantime the deadly fire 
from the port-holes was redoubled and the savages 
within the fort jeered horribly as they noted the 
withering effect of their missiles. Bienville recog- 
nized, too late, the fatal mistake he had made. 
He had no artillery, and without it he could not 
succeed. Stubbornly, desperately, for four hours, 
he dashed his men against the palisades. It was 
madness. The walls were impregnable, and baffled 
and dispirited he was forced to withdraw. 

Sadly enough he made his way back to New 



92 FROM FRANCE TO SPAIN. 

Orleans, only to learn a little later that, on the 
twentieth of May, D'Artaguette and his forces 
had met with a crushing defeat in the Chickasaw 
country while on their way to join the commander 
as ordered. D'Artaguette himself was left wounded 
on the field along with a number of his officers 
who had charged by his side. All of them were 
burned with slow fire at the stake. Vincennes, the 
brave Canadian lieutenant, Senat, the priest, and 
D'Artaguette, the heroic young leader, were the 
chief victims — names that stand for heroism in a 
page of history as romantic as any in the story of 
our country. 

Bienville was in disgrace. He felt that by his 
blundering tactics an almost crushing blow had 
fallen upon the colonies. Over in Georgia and 
Carolina the English were delighted to hear of 
his discomfiture ; his enemies in Louisiana and in 
France set up a cry of contempt and derision. 
Hoping to redeem himself, he asked the war 
department for permission to raise another army 
to lead against the Chickasaws. Near the close of 
1738 this request was granted and he at once began 
the levy. The whole winter was given up to the 
task of collecting and equipping a force which, 
when brought into a body at Fort Assumption, 
numbered three thousand and seven hundred men; 
of these twenty-five hundred were Indians. This 



FROM FRANCE TO SPAIN. 95 

was the largest army tliat Louisiana had ever 
raised and its equipment was excellent. 

With stranfje feebleness, Bienville dallied at the 
site chosen for Fort Assumption and did not finish 
the work there before the middle of August. It 
was not a salubrious spot in the heat of midsum- 
mer, surrounded as it was by malarious swamps and 
dense forests that shut out the breezes. Ague and 
other bilious and malarial diseases attacked the 
men and rendered their lives miserable. Many of 
the whites died. By the time that autumn had 
arrived the supplies were exhausted. Another long 
delay followed, waiting for stores to be brought 
from New Orleans and other points. And so not 
a move was made until in March, 1739, and then 
the only result was a tame and bloodless peace 
after a wordy powwow with the chiefs of the 
enemy. 

This in effect closed the public career of Bien- 
ville in Louisiana, though he lived to be quite old 
and never ceased to take great interest in the wel- 
fare of the colonies. He was superseded by the 
Marquis de Vaudreuil who arrived at New Orleans 
on the tenth of May, 1743. 

It is difficult to separate the elements of Bien- 
ville's character so as to make a fair criticism of 
the man. One thing is plain, however: he was 
true to Louisiana. Moreover it must be admitted 



gS FROM FRANCE TO SPAIN. 

that, in view of his surroundings, his achievements 
were remarkable. In reading his romantic story 
no one will fail to sympathize with him in the dis- 
aster which clouded the beginning of his old age 
and haunted him with its shadow all the rest of 
his life. 

De Vaudreuil found the colonies of Louisiana 
in a deplorable state, especially as regarded their 
finances ; but he could not resist the temptation 
to favor certain of his friends with monopolies. 
Since the peace with the Chickasaws had been con- 
cluded, the navigation of the Mississippi and its 
chief tributaries had been open. One of the first 
acts of importance marking De Vaudreuil's admin- 
istration was a grant to one Deruisseau of the right 
to control the trade of the Missouri and its tribu- 
taries. He gave great credit also, as had most of 
his predecessors, to the stories told of rich gold 
mines in the North, and he influenced many of 
the colonists to make vain efforts to discover the 
supposed hidden sources of wealth. Notwithstand- 
ing these shortcomings, however, he was a good 
governor. Under his direction the affairs of the 
territory swiftly righted themselves and a vigor- 
ous growth of agriculture and trade continued for 
several years. 

New Orleans had now become a thriving town. 
Up and down the river for many miles beautiful 



FROM FRANCE TO SPAIN. 97 

and well-tilled plantations lay at either hand. 
Oranse proves loaded with their golden fruitage 
o-rew around spacious and comfortable homes. As 
the facilities for religious worship and social inter- 
course had increased, the morals of the people had 
greatly improved, and the administration of justice 
was assuming a more enlightened and comprehen- 
sive form. 

In 1745 a tornado passed over Lower Louisiana 
doing immense injury to plantations and crops. 
The rice fields were almost entirely destroyed. A 
famine threatened in consequence; but the colonies 
on the Upper Mississippi came to the rescue with 
supplies which served to avert the worst results. 
This disaster having been averted everything went 
along well until the winter of 1748-49, when a 
series of cold waves, or "northers," reduced the 
atmospheric temperature so low that nearly all the 
orange groves were killed outright. This retarded 
for many years the maturing of tropical fruit 
orchards in the territory. 

The colonies continued to increase in every 
direction. The population in 1 745 had grown to 
over six thousand. The rich alluvial coasts of the 
Mississippi became garden-spots of a varied and 
exceedingly remunerative planting industry. Flat- 
boats and barges came down the river from the far 
upper settlements, bringing cargoes of hides, skins, 



98 FROM FRANCE TO SPAIN, 

cured meats, corn, wheat, and other northern prod- 
uce, and returned loaded with various articles of 
foreign merchandise, together with rice, sugar and 
tobacco, most of these imported. In 1750 cotton 
was planted successfully for the first time and in 
the year following sugar-cane was cultivated just 
above New Orleans. Fourteen years later the first 
cargo of Louisiana sugar was exported. 

Meantime the English colonies on the Atlantic 
coast were very actively engaged in attemping to 
secure a monopoly of the trade with the Indians 
as far westward as to the Mississippi River. With 
this object in view their emissaries were tireless in 
the effort to incite the Chickasaws aQ;-ainst the 
French. Traders from Georgia and Carolina came 
boldly to the Indian towns with their merchandise. 
They made themselves useful to the red-men, and 
taught the chiefs how to make their fortifications 
impregnable to the attack of any force not supplied 
with artillery. Not the Chickasaws only, but the 
Choctav/s as well were led to commit depredations 
which caused a war in 1 750. 

The French were without any efficient service of 
artillery and Vaudreuil, as had been the case with 
Bienville, suffered in consequence. The Chicka- 
saws, urged on by the English, finally became so 
troublesome, that an expedition against them 
became necessary. An army was gathered for 



FROM FRANCE TO SPAIN. 99 

this purpose consisting of seven hundred whites 
and a large body of friendly Indians. 

The fort erected by Bienville on the Tombigbee 
River was enlarged and strengthened to be used as 
a base of operations. Vaudreuil marched boldly 
into the Chickasaw country and assaulted their 
fortifications without effect. Not being able to 
take the towns, he scoured the whole region, de- 
stroying the corn fields, burning the houses and 
laying waste the plantations of his foes. After 
accomplishing this he left a garrison in the fort 
on the Tombigbee and returned to New Orleans. 

In 1753 Vaudreuil was appointed Governor of 
Canada, and on the ninth of February relinquished 
to his commissaire-ordonnateure M. le Capitain Ker- 
lerec the chief office in Louisiana. In some regards 
this was a wholesome change. Vaudreuil's admin- 
istration had been extravagant and oppressive to a 
degree, on account of a miniature court kept up 
by the pleasure-loving Marquis. It was more 
than hinted besides that he had farmed out cer- 
tain offices and grants in order to swell his income 
sufficiently to meet his rather reckless expenses. 
Kerlerec found it necessary to remove some of 
Vaudreuil's appointees because, as he remarked in 
his dispatches to the French government, the peo- 
ple claimed that stipends had been paid to the gov- 
ernor annuallv. Indeed there seems little doubt 



lOO FROM FRANCE TO SPAIN. 

that a great deal of corruption had been practiced 
in Louisiana from the first. It could scarcely have 
been otherwise. The officers, on account of the 
preat distance from France and the weak state of 
the colonies, exercised almost absolute powers and 
there was before them every temptation to licen- 
tiousness and malfeasance. That this temptation 
was not resisted very successfully is proven by the 
case of M. Roux, the officer in command of the 
post on Cat Island. It was well known that he 
made his soldiers fell forests and burn the wood 
into charcoal which he sold for his own benefit, 
but he was not restrained by his superiors. So 
miserable and exasperated did his garrison become 
that they arose in mutiny and killed him. The 
punishment meted out to the mutineers was cruel 
in the extreme. Two of the ringleaders were 
broken on the wheel and another was nailed in a 
wooden box and sawed in twain with a whip-saw 
by two subaltern officers. 

During the first year of Kerlerec's administra- 
tion the French and British at length came to 
open and active hostility and a war was begun for 
the mastery in America which ended only in giving 
Canada and a large part of the great territory of 
Louisiana to the English by a treaty dated at Paris 
on the tenth of February, 1763. 

During this war Louisiana suffered greatly on 



FROM FRANCE TO SPAIN. lOI 

account of the almost bankrupt state of the French 
treasury. The paper currency of the colonies fluct- 
uated disastrously and drove all the coin out of the 
territory. British cruisers patrolled the seas pre- 
venting any efficient aid being sent from France, 
whilst dissensions and wrangling among the offi- 
cers, civil, military, and ecclesiastical, kept the 
inhabitants restless and refractory. Kerlerec man- 
aged to make a show of reduction in the public 
expenditures, but he was hampered on all sides and 
could see no immediate relief for the distressed 
and apparently forsaken people of his province. 
All too soon the English began to threaten New 
Orleans from the sea. There were no adequate 
defences on the river in the direction of the gulf, 
nor was there a fleet at Kerlerec's command fit to 
guard the coast. He sent message after message 
to France, but received no answer. 

The war bc2:an on the head waters of the 
Ohio and spread thence to Canada. Louisiana 
for a Ions: time was free from its immediate 
effects, but her currency grew in volume and 
shrunk in value apace with the progress of the 
struggle and the steady advance of the English 
into the northern territory. One by one the 
strongholds in Canada fell before the invaders 
until the end came with the taking of Montreal 
in I 760. 



I02 FROM FRANCE TO SPAIN. 

Meantime there had been a great increase in the 
population of Louisiana by immigration from the 
French settlements north of the great lakes. Most 
of these sought homes on the prairies and bayou- 
coasts of Avoyelles, Attakapas and Opelousas.. One 
colony came under circumstances which not alone 
the dull details of history, but the genius of our 
greatest American poet have forever impressed 
upon the memory of the world. The British gov- 
ernment, without the slightest foundation in justice, 
ordered all the inhabitants in the province of Acadia 
to be seized, put on board English vessels and trans- 
ported far away from their homes and country. 

At that time Acadia included the area of the 
present province of Nova Scotia. In obedience 
to the order of the English conquerors the inhabi- 
tants, men, women and children, old and young, 
sick and well (about four thousand in all), were 
seized and dragged on board the ships sent for the 
purpose, huddled into the holds like cattle and in 
the fall months of 1755, conveyed to the breezy, 
desolate sand-coasts of Delaware, Maryland, New 
Jersey and Virginia where they were left in utter 
destitution to shift for themselves. As fast as 
they could these poor outcasts made their way to 
New Orleans. Six hundred and fifty of them 
arrived early in 1756 and were sent to Attakapas 
and Opelousas. So began the Acadian settlement 



FROM FRANCE TO SPAFV. 1 03 

in the western part of Louisiana. To this clay that 
section of the State is inhal^ited by the descendants 
of those refugees from English outrage. These 
people have preserved with remarkable fidelity the 
old-time customs and habits of their simple, honest 
and unambitious ancestors.* 

In 1763 the final treaty between England and 
France was perfected and France agreed secretly 
with Spain to transfer Louisiana to her. By 
the former treaty the English took possession of 
all North America east of the Mississippi River, 
with the exception of that small area extending 
from lakes Maurepas, Ponchartrain and Borgne 
southward and westward to the gulf and the river, 
including the island of Orleans. 

The people of Louisiana were not at once in- 
formed of the fact that their country had been 
ceded to Spain. Gradually the news crept among 
them. It was received with consternation and 
resentment which soon arose to the highest pitch. 



•"The removal of the French Acadians from their homes," says Mr. Charles C. Smith, 
"was one of the saddest episodes in modern history, and no one will attempt to justify it; but 
it should be added that the genius of our great poet has thrown a somewhat false and distorted 
light over the character of the victims. They were not the peaceful and simple-hearted people 
they are commonly supposed to have been ; and their homes, as we learn from contemporary 
evidence, were by no means the picturesque, vine-clad, and strongly built cottages described 
by the poet. The people were notably quarrelsome among themselves, and to the last degree 
superstitious. . . . Even in periods when France and England were at peace the French 
Acadians were a source of perpetual danger to the English colonists. . . . But all this 
does not justify their expulsion in the manner in which it was executed, and it will always remain 
a foul blot in the history of Nova Scotia." This is the other side of the story and should be 
quoted in justification. But it is safe to assume that the real facts can never qualify the sym- 
pathetic love for the Acadians created by the delightful cadences of " Evangeline." — [Ed. 



104 FROM FRANCE TO SPA IN. 

The Spanish Government, aware of this feeling, 
hesitated to take formal possession of the terri- 
tory. The French colonists petitioned their 
mother country in vain for some action by which 
they might continue under the control of their 
kine. Nothino- could be more bitter to them 
than the thought of submitting to Spanish rule. 
No doubt this sentiment was fanned into an active 
flame of passion by the men who were controlling 
the Mississippi trade ; for the coming of the new 
administration would end their monopoly. 

D'Abadie, who was acting as director-general, 
held his office for two years after he had received 
orders to surrender the government of Louisiana 
to the Spanish sovereign. Don Antonio de Ulloa 
with a guard of infantry reached New Orleans 
on the fifth of March, 1766. He came with in- 
structions from Charles III. and was directed to 
take possession of the province without any dis- 
play, using every means in his power to pacify 
the French inhabitants. This task, however, proved 
a very delicate and difficult one. From the first 
he was met with the most stubborn and resentful 
bearing by the people over whom he was to rule. 
He hesitated to take formal and public possession 
of the country, seeing that great trouble was almost 
sure to follow. The longer he hesitated the higher 
rose the feelings of the people. Suddenly, in Sep- 



FROM FRANCE TO SPAIN. io; 

tember, he left New Orleans and went to the Balize 
where he remained a long time, apparently unmind- 
ful of what was going on. Delegations of citizens 
and officials were sent to him from New Orleans, 
but they returned no wiser than when they started. 
This was exasperating. Days and weeks and 
months went by, and still no explanation of Ulloa's 
strange action was forthcoming. Gradually a feel- 
ino- of dread besfan to take the place of resent- 
ment. It might be that UUoa was awaiting the 
arrival of a Spanish fleet and army with which he 
would proceed to grind the colonies into subjection 
so that he could govern them as the Mexican 
colonies were governed. The thought was terrible 
and many of the inhabitants began to make ready 
for migration. 

Aubrey had succeeded D'Abadie as director- 
general and while he was waiting to surrender the 
province to UUoa a conspiracy was formed among 
the leaders of the French colonists for the purpose 
of resisting the transfer. The members of this 
organization met in secret to perfect their plans. 
Finally on the twenty-seventh of October, 1 768, a 
revolutionary movement was begun by an upris- 
ino- of armed citizens. From all directions the set- 
tlements poured their men into New Orleans. The 
guns about the city were spiked and the mob took 
control of the streets. 



io8 FROM FRANCE TO SPAIN.' 

Ulloa, who had returned from his hermitaee at the 
Balize, bringing with him as his bride a Peruvian 
lady of great wealth, was unaware of any conspir- 
acy against him until he saw the armed men in 
New Orleans and heard their wild shouts of Vive 
le roi! Aubrey was as much surprised as Ulloa 
could have been, for the insurgents had kept their 
plans so hidden that he had never suspected their 
existence. He took prompt measures, however, to 
shield the Spaniards from harm. Ulloa and his 
wife were hurriedly put on board a vessel which at 
once swung out into the middle of the river. 
On the twenty-ninth, in spite of Aubrey's en- 
treaties and threats, the Supreme Council passed 
a resolution requiring Ulloa to produce at once his 
commission or give proof of his authority from the 
Spanish Government. Failing to do this he was 
ordered to leave the country within a month. 
Don Ulloa chose the latter alternative and sailed 
for Cuba. 

The reason for this delay of nearly three years 
on the part of the Spanish Government before it 
took actual possession of Louisiana is not quite 
plain. True the province, in a financial way, was, 
at best, not a desirable acquisition. The question 
regarding the management of the worthless paper 
currency left afloat in the colonies by the French 
Government was something to temporize with, but 



FROM FRAXCE TO SFAW. 1 09 

still it is not easily seen why these considerations 
should have caused such dangerous delays in the 
matter of assuming local control. A prompt and 
firm course in the beginning, if accompanied 
with kindness and justice, would have prevented 
a great deal of trouble. 

Ulloa had been exceedingly kind to the French 
and the treatment he received at their hands was 
far from justifiable. While he was in the vessel 
which was to bear him from New Orleans to 
Cuba, a party of noisy rioters marched down to 
the river bank and cut the cable by which his ship 
was moored. Then, with hilarious delight, they 
watched the result as the strong current of the 
stream bore the vessel rapidly away. 

On October 31, the Council had formally over- 
ruled Aubrey's protest, and had reafifirmed its 
order to Ulloa. Three days before this the 
planters and merchants of Louisiana had drawn 
up an address or manifesto in which they justi- 
fied the revolution and heaped many accusations 
upon the head of Don Antonio Ulloa. 

As Aubrey had virtually recognized Ulloa as gov- 
ernor of Louisiana, the revolutionists treated him 
also with contempt. He in turn told them that they 
would probably come to the end usually reached by 
insurgents, meaning death by public execution at 
the hands of the authorities. 



no FROM FRANCE TO SPAIN. 

The chief instigators and leaders of the re- 
volt were Lafreniere, the attorney-general, Focault, 
the commissary, Marquis, a captain of the infantry, 
Mazent, a wealthy planter, and two of ex-Governor 
Bienville's nephews, Doucet, a lawyer, Villiere, the 
commander of the German coast, and many other 
leading men of New Orleans and vicinity. Lafre- 
niere was a sort of Patrick Henry, eloquent, fiery, 
impetuous, just the man to influence his fellows at 
such a time, and to lead them as he pleased. He 
delivered an address to the Council which was full 
of cunning appeals to French prejudice and pas- 
sion, and at the same time it was couched in terms 
of bitterest contempt for the Spanish intruders 
and for their methods of procedure since their 
arrival in Louisiana. It was this speech that shaped 
the policy of the Council and drove Ulloa out of the 
province. 

The revolution was complete and the French 
found themselves masters of the situation ; but 
what was to be done next } So soon as the heat 
of the crisis had spent itself, the more thoughtful 
ones among the insurgents began to look at each 
other askance. It was the lull between storms. 

At this time New Orleans was a place of three 
thousand two hundred inhabitants, and was sur- 
rounded by a strong palisade and trenches. Many 
comfortable, even luxurious homes had been built 



FROM FRANCE TO SPAIN. 1 1 1 

and a circle of refined and elegant society had 
formed itself upon the model of Vaudreuirs little 
court; but the province had not yet reached the 
point of absolute self dependence, and in order to 
sustain themselves in their comparative luxury of 
living, the leaders of politics and society must have 
the aid afforded by a rich foreign government. 
What if France should refuse to stand by them 
in this defiance of Spain ? What if Spain should 
send an overwhelming army to crush them into 
submission ? 

A delegation was dispatched to France to inter- 
cede with the Crown, but, of course, under the cir- 
cumstances, the mission was fruitless. Louisiana 
just then was a load of which the French Govern- 
ment was glad to be rid. The burden was on the 
shoulders of Spain, and she must bear it. 

The revolutionists began to count the chances 
of the future. They found their treasury practi- 
cally empty, their supply of arms and muni- 
tions of war very scant, their available force of 
men not exceeding fifteen hundred or eighteen 
hundred at most and, worst of all, no unanimity 
of feeling among the people. Deep down in their 
hearts lay an awful dread of Spanish vengeance, 
and well it might lie there, for the whole world 
knew how terrible that vengeance could be. 

Some Spanish ofi^ccrs had been left in New 



1 1 2 FROM FRANCE TO SPAIN. 

Orleans b)^ Ulloa. These were treated with great 
consideration. Aubrey showed them every courtesy, 
and a number of the more prudent French citizens 
became their staunch friends and supporters. 

Thus as time wore on the suspense became 
almost unbearable to those who had clamored so 
loudly for the expulsion of Ulloa. There was 
something ominous in the delay. 

At length, suddenly, on the twenty-third of July, 
1769, a dispatch was received announcing the 
arrival of a Spanish fleet at the Balize. Nor was 
it a mere nominal force that it brought upon its 
decks. The twenty-four vessels were heavily 
armed and bore an army which could with ease 
overrun and devastate the entire province. 

Now, indeed, was the hour come for the insur- 
gents to tremble. Villiere who was the leading 
spirit of the German and the Acadian coasts, had 
kept his people in open rebellion to the last miO- 
ment ; but now, seeing how overpowering were 
the Spanish forces, he began preparations to leave 
the territor}'. It would appear, however, that he 
received assurances of kind treatment, for he seems 
to have changed his determination and to have 
thrown himself upon the mercy of the Spanish 
commander. 



CHAPTER V. 



UNDER THE FLAG OF SPAIN. 




Y rejecting with 
scorn the paci- 
fic overtures of 
Ulloa and by 
maintaining a 
rebelHous and 
threatening at- 
t i t u d e, the 
French of 
Louisiana had 
made but a 
poor exchange of masters, as they soon discovered. 
Don Alexander O'Reilly who was now at their 
gates with a strong fleet, many cannon, infantry, 
cavalry and mounted riflemen — an army the like of 
which Louisiana had never seen — was not a man 
to be met with even the slightest show of resistance 
or discourtesy. He was a man of courage^ firm- 
ness, executive ability and great cunning, and he 
had come in a mood anything but gentle and tem- 
porizing. The Spanish Government had breathed 

"3 



114 UNDER THE EL AG OF SPAIN. 

into him the breath of despotic force. Nor is this 
to be wondered at, when all the facts are consid- 
ered. The treatment which Spain had received 
cannot be called fair. Louisiana was not only a 
colony of. France, it was also dependent on her for 
existence at the time of the cession to Spain. It 
was France and not Spain with whom the colonies 
had the right to find fault. But liberty is dear and 
the preference for the country of one's ancestors is 
founded in human nature. This was a case, how- 
ever, where the love of liberty and the preference 
for the mother country were permitted to over- 
ride the best dictates of a necessary prudence and 
a wiser caution. 

When O'Reilly's fleet appeared before New 
Orleans the people were ready to submit to Span- 
ish control as a matter of self-preservation; but it 
was a terrible ordeal when with banners flying and 
guns thundering salutes, two thousand six hundred 
soldiers landed and marched in splendid array into 
the town, shouting Viva cl rey! and taking position 
in the form of a hollow square. An artillery force 
of fifty guns, some mounted militia and a force of 
light infantry and mounted riflemen formed an im- 
posing part of the parade. 

Crowds of people from the various settlements 
had come to New Orleans to witness the scene. 
They returned to their homes overawed and 



UNDER THE FLAG OF SPAIN. 115 

despondent. Now, indeed, they knew that they 
were Spanish subjects. 

O'Reilly acted with a promptness, an energy and 
a brutal cruelty worthy of the dark record already 
made by his Government in all its American 
provinces. 

On the twenty-first of August he called before 
him twelve of the men who had been most con- 
spicuous in urging the insurrection, and after hav- 
ino- read to them the orders of his sovereign, he 
told them that they were prisoners and must 
answer to a charge of treason and insurrection. 

There was a trial and five of the twelve, namely : 
Lafreniere, Noyan Bienville, Caresse, Marquis and 
Milhet, were condemned to be hanged, one was 
sentenced to imprisonment for life, two to ten years' 
confinement, three to six years' confinement, and 
the property of all was declared confiscated to the 
king's treasury. This blow fell with crushing 
effect. The condemned men were, most of them, 
connected with a large number of the best and 
most prosperous families in Louisiana. 

Villiere had already come to a tragic death. He 
had been confined under close guard on a Spanish 
frigate in the river, and had been allowed to see no 
one but his captors. His wife, frenzied with grief 
and apprehension visited him, but was refused 
admission to his presence. Villiere hearing her 



Il6 UNDER THE FLAG OF SPAIN. 

voice tried to go to her, and in a struggle with his 
guards was killed outright. Madame Villiere per- 
sisted in her attempts to reach her husband until at 
last the brutal soldiers flung to her the bloody shirt 
of their mangled victim to assure her that he was 
dead. 

A few days after their trial the five men who had 
been sentenced to be hanged were led forth and 
shot, a military death having been permitted by 
O'Reilly, in lieu of the more disgraceful one at the 
rope's end. 

The sorrow and distress that fell upon the hearts 
of the colonists as the result of these terrible trao-- 
edies can be but faintly described. Horror hovered 
over the entire territory. The distinguished victims 
had kindred and dear friends not only in and about 
New Orleans, but in every settlement in Lower 
Louisiana. Weeping and mourning and the gloom 
of funeral sadness took possession of almost every 
household. 

The suave manners and smiling face of O'Reilly, 
his kindly words and his acts of generosity to those 
who had not incurred his displeasure, made the 
brutality of his punishments appear all the more 
hideous. He was looked upon as an affable and 
gracious-appearing fiend who might be expected to 
wreak his terrible vengeance upon any one at any 
hour. Nobody felt safe for a moment, day or 



UNDER THE FLAG OF SPAIN. II7 

night. Business was wholly neglected and people 
were almost afraid to speak to each other for fear 
that they might be accused of plotting insurrection. 

O'Reilly proceeded to organize a new govern- 
ment based upon Spanish methods. He ordered 
that all the judicial records shall be kept in the 
Spanish language, and that there should be no 
other tongue recognized in the pleadings and pro- 
cedure of the courts. 

Althouoh he was a severe man and remained 
unpopular during his administration, he studied 
the interests of Louisiana and advanced her mate- 
rial prosperity in many ways. His laws appear to 
have been wise and wholesome in the main, and 
his influence, barring his monstrous acts at the out- 
set of his career, was more for good than for bad. 

Emigration from Spain set in and the popula- 
tion of Louisiana was greatly increased. The new 
colonists opened settlements on the Mississippi 
and in the western part of the territory, on the 
prairies of the region lying beyond the Teche. 

O'Reilly closed the Mississippi to traders from 
outside of Louisiana and prohibited all foreigners 
from passing through the province without a pass- 
port from him; nor was any person permitted to 
leave Louisiana until an order had been granted. 

At the end of a year he fell into disgrace with 
the Spanish Government and was superseded by 



Il8 UNDER THE EL AG OF SPAIN. 

Don Antonio Maria Bucarelly who held command 
until the arrival of Don Luis de Unzaga, named by 
O'Reilly as his successor. Unzaga was confirmed 
as governor of the province on the seventeenth of 
August, 1772. The winter following was extremely 
cold and for the third time since the foundine of 
New Orleans, the orange orchards of Louisiana 
were all killed. 

Unzaga saw that O'Reilly had laid the founda- 
tion of good government by his vigorous action in 
the case of the insurgent leaders, and he wisely 
sought to build upon it by a kind and liberal 
administration. Those executions have been char- 
acterized as brutal and cruel ; but it must be 
admitted that from the Spanish point of view they 
were justifiable. O'Reilly was a military despot, 
but the impartial critic must accord to him a much 
better character than historians have been willine 
that he should disclose in their pictures of him. 
He came to Louisiana immediately after the ex- 
pulsion of Ulloa and found the colonies flooded 
with incendiary documents, the populace in arms 
against his king, and a self-constituted council 
usurping the power of government. He struck 
swiftly and without mercy at the heart of insubor- 
dination, and by one fell blow taught the French 
that they were not to consider themselves as any- 
thing more or less than Spanish subjects. 



UNDER THE FLA-G OF SPAIN. 12 1 

The lesson was terrible; but it was not necessary 
to repeat it. One such is an education. Unzaga 
made haste to draw the people to him, and so kind 
was he and so watchful of their interests that 
he soon fixed himself firmly in their confidence. 
Under the benign influence of his administration 
the affairs of Louisiana brightened and the colo- 
nies prospered. Population increased with great 
rapidity during the whole period of his stay in 
Louisiana, and the agriculture of the Mississippi 
Valley was vastly improved. 

In 1776 he was appointed captain-general of 
Caraccas, and Don Bernard de Galvez took the 
office of governor of Louisiana on the first of 
January, 1777. 

In the meantime the English colonies of North 
America had declared their independence and a 
struggle was going on between them and Great 
Britain. All the territory of Louisiana lay remote 
from the chief centres of Anglo-American popula- 
tion, and would therefore have been little affected 
by the war which followed the Declaration of 
Independence, had Spain but kept out of the 
controversy. 

France ranged herself on the side of the colonies 
early in the struggle ; Spain (having offered to 
interfere amicably) was snubbed in the most offen- 
sive and arrogant way by England. 



122 UNDER THE FLAG OF SPAIN. 

At this time there were British forts and earri- 
sons at Mobile, at Baton Rouge, at Fort Bute and 
at Natchez. Indeed, as the war progressed many 
emigrants from the EngHsh colonies settled along 
the east bank of the Mississippi where they hoped 
to find exemption from the evils of the bloody and 
desperate struggle for liberty. Against these set- 
tlers the people of Louisiana nursed a deep-seated 
hostility which was thoroughly understood and 
carefully encouraged by their Spanish masters. 
When England went to war with France the old 
love of their mother country still smoldering in 
the hearts of the French Creoles was revived. 
They burned to strike their ancient enemy the 
British traders. They had not long to wait for the 
coveted opportunity. Galvez, although prudent 
and cautious, was full of military ardor. He 
longed for the turn of events which would permit 
him to attack Mobile, Pensacola, Baton Rouge and 
all the other English posts. 

On the twenty-second of April, 1777, Colonel 
George Morgan of the American colonial army, 
who was in command at Fort Pitt, wrote to Galvez 
asking leave to pass an army through Louisiana 
for the purpose of attacking Mobile and Pensacola, 
hoping by this move to strike the English a telling 
blow where they were least expecting it. But the 
Spanish governor was too wise to permit such a 



UNDER THE FLAG OF SPAIN. 123 

thing. In the first place he was not entirely sure 
of the loyalty of his own subjects, and then, too, it 
would be imprudent to take the step without the 
permission of his king. 

Laro-e numbers of emicrrants continued to arrive 
in Louisiana and there was a steady, healthy in- 
crease in the agricultural and commercial interest. 
Under the new order of things, which permitted 
free trade with all the Spanish ports, New Orleans 
grew in importance as well as in size. Many boats 
descended the Mississippi from the settlements on 
its upper waters, bringing down heavy cargoes of 
produce, and for a time the colonies were exceed- 
ingly prosperous. In 1779 a body of four hundred 
and ninety-nine emigrants reached New Orleans 
from the Canary Islands. These were sent to the 
banks of Bayou Teche and there formed the settle- 
ment of New Iberia. 

The formal declaration of war by Spain against 
Great Britain was made known to Galvez at the 
earliest moment and he was authorized to treat the 
English as enemies. This was welcome intelli- 
gence. He chafed to begin military operations. 
In the summer of 1779 he organized an army of 
fourteen hundred men and marched against Fort 
Bute on the Manchac, which he assaulted and 
carried by storm. With great promptness and 
rapidity he followed up this victory. Reinforce- 



124 UNDER THE EL AG OF SPAIN, 

merits to the number of six hundred came to his 
aid, and by the twenty-seventh he had reached 
Baton Rouge. This was the most important Brit- 
ish post on the river, but it surrendered to him 
after a sharp fight of two hours. The fall of Baton 
Rouge put into the hands of Galvez the area of 
country now occupied by the parishes of Baton 
Rouge and Feliciana, with the forts it contained. 
It was a short, brilliant and wholly successful cam- 
paign. The people of Louisiana were greatly 
elated by it and Galvez took the importance of 
a hero in their estimation. The Spanish king 
promptly sent to him the commission of brigadier- 
general of the royal forces of Louisiana and ordered 
him to prepare at once to attack the other British 
posts within his reach. 

Without delay he began the work. So rapidly 
did he organize his forces that on the fifth of Feb- 
ruary, 1780, he set sail for Mobile with an army of 
two thousand men. On the gulf his fleet encoun- 
tered a severe gale which did considerable damage 
to some of the vessels, but in due time he sailed 
into the Mobile River and landed his forces on the 
eastern point of the river's bank. Thence, after a 
hurried reconnoissance, he marched boldly up to 
Fort Charlotte and invested it, planting six bat- 
teries in position for effective bombardment. All 
the guns were put into action and served with fine 



UNDER THE EL AG OE SPAEW 125 

results. A breach w::.; made in the wall of the 
fort, and on the fourteenth of March it was sur- 
rendered to the brave and intrepid Galvez. The 
young conqueror was then but twenty-four years 

old. 

Feelino- that it was of the utmost importance 
to continue his triumphant campaign against the 
English, Galvez returned to New Orleans and sent 
a dispatch to the captain-general of Cuba, asking 
for reinforcements. These being delayed he pro- 
ceeded to Havana and in person superintended the 
fittino- out of a fleet and army, with which he set 
sail for Pensacola on the sixteenth of October. A 
storm broke up and dispersed his fleet before he 
reached his destination, and after a month of 
almost superhuman effort in re-gathering his scat- 
tered vessels he returned to Havana. This disaster 
did not daunt him in the least. He demanded 
another fleet and at length on the twenty-eighth of 
February, 17S1, he w^as again on the gulf wdth a 
ship of the line, two frigates and several transports, 
bearino- fourteen hundred soldiers, formidable artil- 
lery and everything that in those days went to 
make up an eflicient force. Don Jose Cabro de 
Izrabel commanded the fleet, though Galvez had 
controlled the expedition. 

Pensacola was reached without delay and on the 
ninth of March Galvez landed on the island of 



126 UNDER THE FLAG OF SPAIN. 

St. Rose, where he erected some earth-works and 
planted a battery to protect the vessels while pass- 
ing the bar; but a misunderstanding arose be- 
tween him and Izrabel, and the fleet was not 
moved. 

The Spanish admiral insisted that the channel 
was too narrow, too swift and too shallow for his 
vessels, and that any attempt to attack the fort by 
water would be utterly fruitless. Galvez strenu- 
ously contended that the attack should be made 
by the fleet and the land forces simultaneously ; 
but finding the admiral stubborn he set about the 
task of reducing the fort with the troops and ves- 
sels that were exclusively under his command. 

On the sixteenth Espeleta arrived from Mobile 
with all the men he could muster, and he was 
followed by Mirb who brought the forces from 
New Orleans. 

Galvez had a brig, two gun-boats and a schooner. 
He went on board of the brig and ordered his 
little fleet to pass the fort. Sail was set immedi- 
ately and the four vessels swept slowly on, the fort 
directing upon them a heavy fire to which they 
answered with spirit and effect. Galvez, whose 
feelings had been aroused to the highest pitch of 
indignation by the stubborn willfulness of the 
admiral, purposely exposed himself to the aim of 
the English cannoneers. The fort was safely passed 



UNDER THE FLAG OF SPAIN. 127 

and a landing made at the end of the bay, the 
troops cheering, the flags flying and salutes thun- 
derincT across the water. The Spanish admiral 
cau<rht the enthusiasm of the intrepid and coura- 
creous vouno- commander and at once prepared to 
sail over the bar. When the tide rose next day 
he was ready. Leading the way with his frig- 
ate he safely passed the obstructing sands and 
sailed along in front of the fort under a heavy fire. 
Galvez in an open boat came forth to meet him 
and to direct him where to anchor. The coolness, 
alertness and bravery of the governor, his forget- 
fulness of self, and his zeal and energy infected 
even the crews of the fleet and stirred their feelings 
to the highest pitch of enthusiasm. 

Galvez demanded the surrender of the fort, but 
it was refused after much parleying. Preparations 
for the attack were then rapidly completed. A line 
of investment, with batteries placed in commanding 
position, was so laid that the fleet could co-operate 
effectively, and at a given signal the assault began 
from all sides in such a manner that the apparent 
force of the Spaniards was highly magnified. 

Izrabel felt the necessity of showing a courage 
and enthusiasm equal to the occasion, in order not 
to appear inferior to Galvez. He therefore put his 
fleet into position and poured his broadsides into 
the fort in a steady and crushing volume. Espeleta 



128 UNDER THE EL AG OE SEAIN. 

and Mirb had landed their forces on the Perdido 
and from there had marched to a position on one 
side of the English works while Galvez pushed his 
guns close to the other side. 

The English, finding that the heavy guns of 
Izrabel's fleet were about to make a breach in the 
fort, hastily advanced some batteries to a position 
not commanded from the water, and by a well- 
directed fire drove the vessels to the other side of 
the bay. This movement left Galvez unsupported, 
but he was not daunted. Concentratinor his o-uns 
on a salient point of the enemy's works he suc- 
ceeded in lodging a shell in the powder magazine 
situated therein and it blew up with a terrific 
explosion. Into the breach rushed Espeleta with 
a detachment of men and four field pieces. Galvez 
saw the opportunity. Forming his men all in a 
body and placing himself at their head, he was 
just ready to order the assault, when a white flag 
was hung out from the fort. 

On the ninth of May the English surrendered 
the post and over eight hundred prisoners, thus 
giving into the hands of the Spaniards the whole 
of West Florida. 

Meantime there had been an insurrection amone 
the English colonists in the Natchez district and 
Fort Panmure had fallen into the hands of the 
rebels. These did not hold the place long, how- 



UNDER THE FLAG OF SPAIN. 129 

ever, for hearing of the victory won by Galvez they 
fled toward the Atlantic coast and after terrible 
suffering and a journey of one hundred and thirty- 
one days a part of them reached Savannah in an 
almost starving condition. 

The civil affairs of Louisiana were far from pros- 
perous during the years 1779, '80 and '81. The 
commerce of the colonies had suffered every possi- 
ble evil and agriculture had been reduced to the 
lowest point of depression. In August, 1780, an 
awful hurricane rushed over the province, demol- 
ishing houses, fences and granaries, ruining all 
the growing crops, swamping all the vessels on 
the river and lakes and making utter havoc of 
everything that came in its way. This was the 
culmination of a long series of disasters. Small- 
pox had raged, the war with Great Britain had 
ruined commerce, there had been floods, inunda- 
tions and hurricanes, a very rainy summer, and a 
winter the coldest ever known in Louisiana. Gal- 
vez had been victorious, however, and the people 
stood by him with great courage and fortitude. 
He prevailed upon his king to grant to them 
commercial privileges hitherto withheld, and did 
all in his power to advance their interests and 
improve their condition. Honors flowed in upon 
him. He was made Licutenant-General, decorated 
with the cross of Knight-Pensioner, commissioned 



I30 UNDER THE FLAG OF SPAIN. 

Captain-General of Louisiana and Florida, and 
made a count. A little later he was appointed 
Captain-General of Cuba and of Louisiana and the 
Floridas. From this position he quickly rose to 
that of Viceroy of Mexico, but retained still the 
office of Captain-General in Louisiana and the 
Floridas. During all this time he was as beloved 
as he was honored. 

There is no more strikino^ and romantic iieure 
in American history than the young, magnetic, 
brilliant and successful Galvez. He was a true 
Spaniard of the very best sort, brave, magnani- 
mous, fond of dash and show, an aristocrat and 
yet a lover of the people, the friend and the idol 
of his subjects. His wife, a native of Louisiana, 
was a brilliant, kind and lovable woman who won 
the hearts of all. His career closed all too soon. 
He died in Mexico when but thirty-eight years old. 

On the twentieth'of February, 1783, was signed 
the treaty of peace that confirmed the independ- 
ence of the United States. It also fixed the 
boundary of Louisiana and of East and West 
Florida, the last-mentioned provinces having been 
ceded to Spain by Great Britain. It was fully 
stipulated in this treaty that the Mississippi Riv^r 
should remain forever free, from its mouth to its 
source, to navigation by all British subjects and by 
all the citizens of the United States. 



\ 






















UNDER THE FLAG OF SPAIN. 1 33 

The census of Louisiana shows a population in 
17S5 of thirty-one thousand four hundred and 
thirty-three. The number of slaves nearly equalled 
that of the whites, and there were over one thou- 
sand free persons of color. The population of 
New Orleans w^as about five thousand. 

No sooner had the American war ended than 
emi^i'^tion to Louisiana revived. Don Estavan 
Mirb, who was acting as governor in the absence 
of Galvez, permitted British subjects to take the 
oath of allegiance to Spain, and granted an exten- 
sion of time for the preparations making by those 
who wished to remove out of the province. 

Li 1787 a feeling was prevalent in the American 
settlements adjacent to Louisiana, that longer 
adherence to the Federal Union was not desir- 
able, and that some plan of separation should be 
devised. In June of this year Colonel James 
Wilkinson (a name not unknown in American 
"diplomacy") was in New Orleans, ostensibly as a 
merchant trader with a cargo of bacon, butter, 
flour and tobacco, but in reality as a schemer for 
some sort of understanding with the Louisiana 
authorities. At the same time Mirb had his agents 
at work using every means to promote emigration 
from the United States into his province. In 
January, 1778, he wrote to Valdes, minister and 
secretary of State for the department of the Indies: 



134 UNDER THE FLAG OF SPAIN. 

" The delivering up of Kentucky into his Maj- 
esty's hands, which is the object to which Wilkin- 
son has promised to wholly devote himself, would 
render that province a lasting bulwark of defence 
for New Spain." 

The truth of this matter appears to have been 
that Colonel Wilkinson was a shrewd trader, bent 
upon his own business, and that by professing to 
favor Mirb's schemes he obtained a monopoly of 
the tobacco trade from Kentucky and was per- 
mitted to brino- his caro-oes to New Orleans with- 
out competition. Whether or not he was really 
conspiring to put Kentucky into Spanish hands is 
an open question. That he professed to be favor- 
able to the scheme cannot be doubted. 

On the afternoon of the twenty-first of March, 
1788, a fire broke out in New Orleans, which 
destroyed all the best part of the city. Eight 
hundred and fifty-six buildings were burned with a 
loss of more than two and a half million dollars. 

In this year a census was taken which showed 
the population of New Orleans to be five thousand 
three hundred and thirty-eight, and that of Louis- 
iana forty-two thousand three hundred and forty- 
six, a gain in the province for the past three years 
of ten thousand. Indeed the scheme of emigration 
had succeeded to a considerable extent. The 
people of Western North Carolina had become 



UNDER THE FLAG OF SPAIN. 135 

dissatisfied, and as early as 1786 they had declared 
themselves independent, and had erected a new 
State which they called Frankland ; this creation 
however had but a short life. Its destruction in the 
following year led to emigration from that region to 
Louisiana, and John Sevier who had been elected 
governor of the short-lived State wrote the Span- 
ish minister to the effect that the people of 
Western North Carolina were tired of their con- 
nection with the Federal Union and were unani- 
mous in their desire to join Spain. Indeed the 
intrigues of Wilkinson, Morgan, White, Dunn and 
others, with the governor Mir6 and the Spanish min- 
ister Guardoqui, form one of the strangest and most 
intricate episodes in the history of America. On 
the part of the Spaniards there can be no doubt 
that the negotiations were sincere and looked 
toward the acquisition of a large territory ; but 
in the light of the facts it would appear that 
the parties of the second part were, to a very 
great degree, bent upon the acquisition of Spanish 
dollars, without regard for the political outcome 
of their acts. But whatever may have been the 
real purposes of the schemers, one thing is sure : 
Louisiana was the gainer in the outcome ; for the 
movement gave a great impetus to the Mississippi 
River trade and started a tide of emigration toward 
the rich districts of the Spanish province. 



136 UNDER THE FLAG OF SPAIN. 

On the thirtieth of December, 1791, Miro was 
superseded by Don Francisco Louis Hector, Baron 
de Carondelet, who from that date became governor 
and intendant of Louisiana and West Florida. 

Meantime a bloody revolution in St. Domingo 
had sent many of the French residents of that ill- 
fated island to find a home in Louisiana. Indeed, 
by the arrival of colonists from many parts of the 
world the population of the province had been 
greatly increased. New Orleans had been rebuilt 
with much better houses and public edifices than it 
had contained before the great fire of 1 788, and there 
was nothing to mar the prospect save the growing 
fear of approaching war with France or with 
Eneland. The trade between New Orleans and 
Philadelphia had been free, and, in fact, although 
the Spanish Government had forbidden it, foreign 
merchants residing within Louisiana were allowed 
every privilege of trade. 

Early in 1793 came the information that Spain 
had declared war against France. To the French 
population of Louisiana this was by no means 
encouraging news, although they desired nothing 
so much as to feel themselves once more subjects 
of their beloved mother country. War between 
Spain and any country, however, could not fail to 
cause great distress in the colonies, for it rendered 
the transportation of supplies very difficult and 



UNDER THE FLAG OF SPAIN. 137 

irregular, and made the commercial operations of 
the colonists exceedingly precarious. Still the 
feeling in favor of France was too strong to be 
entirely controlled by a people as volatile and rest- 
less as were the Creoles of those days. The word 
was passed from lip to lip and from settlement to 
settlement that France might soon claim her own 
again, and many a heart throbbed the quicker at 
the thought that one of these days a fleet bear- 
ing the French flag would come up the river and 
drive the Spanish out of New Orleans. Not that 
the administration of Carondelet had been distaste- 
ful ; it could not be urged that any French governor 
had been wiser or kinder; the sentiment was the 
development of that lingering or hereditary home- 
sickness for the country of their youth or of their 
forefathers which made the Creoles ever ready to 
grasp at the shadow of a hope whenever the name 
of France was spoken. Even to this day something 
of the kind is observable in the French-speaking 
population of Louisiana. They speak of " our 
beloved France " as if it were the land of their 
allegiance, and as if the phrase were the final ex- 
pression of all that patriotism can mean. 



CHAPTER VI. 



INTRIGUE AND UNREST. 




ARONDELET quick- 
ly discovered that the 
s y m p a t h i e s of his 
French subjects were 
with the repubhc of 
France in the struggle 
now going on, and he 
well knew the danger 
of permitting these 
sympathies to pass 
beyond control. The very words, Liberty and 
the Republic, were significant of danger to the 
Spanish hold on Louisiana. On every hand there 
was talk of the prospect of returning to the arms 
of the mother country. At the theatre the audi- 
ences, fired with the thought of France and liberty, 
shouted to the orchestra to play the " Marseillaise," 
while the more anarchistic of the rabble bawled out 
the inflammable catch-words and the blood-thirsty 
songs of the Jacobins. 

138 



IXTRIGUE AND UNREST. 139 

So far as fortifications were concerned, New 
Orleans was defenseless at this time. Carondelet 
was therefore too wise to resort to vigorous meas- 
ures for suppressing the rapidly rising spirit of 
revolt. He knew that the thoughtful leaders among 
the people would soon see that it would be foolish 
to risk a rebellion. Taking council of these he 
sent out papers for citizens to subscribe in which 
the signers bound themselves to faithfully support 
the king and to adhere loyally to his government 
in Louisiana. The fate of Lafreniere and his 
coadjutors was not so far in the past that its 
lesson was forgotten. Men were really in no 
great hurry to repeat the experiment which 
exchanged Ulloa for O'Reilly. 

With great promptness and energy Carondelet 
set a large force of men at work building defences 
around New Orleans. He issued orders that revo- 
lutionary music and certain martial dances should 
not be allowed in the theatres ; he promptly ar- 
rested and transported to Cuba six persons who 
had been over-bold in giving expression to republi- 
can sentiments. 

His next step was to seek an alliance, offensive 
and defensive, with the neighboring Indian tribes. 
Five of the most powerful of these, the Chickasaws, 
the Cherokees, the Creeks, the Alibamons and the 
Talapouches, were drawn into a confederacy by 



140 INTRIGUE AND UNREST. 

which they bound themselves to stand firmly by 
Spain against her enemies, and to aid the govern- 
ment of Louisiana in maintaining itself. 

Above and below New Orleans Carondelet built 
strong forts, superintending their erection in per- 
son. He also reconstructed the fortifications higher 
up the river. About this time he wrote to the 
Spanish Government as follows : " By extreme vig- 
ilance and by spending sleepless nights, by scaring 
some and punishing others, by banishing a number, 
particularly some new-comers from France who 
were debauching the people with their republican 
teaching, by intercepting letters and documents 
suspected of being incendiary, and by prevaricating 
with everybody I have done better than I had ex- 
pected, as the province is now quite orderly and 
quiet." 

Truly a breezy touch, this, of diplomatic descrip- 
tion ; it gives us a refreshing glimpse of official 
life in America as it was a little less than a hun- 
dred years ago. The tactics of the Jacobins, 
who had a society in Philadelphia and were flood- 
ing the country with their peculiar documents, 
had forced Carondelet to take strong measures, 
and without delay he placed his army on a war 
footing, making a great show of confidence and 
activity. At the same time he sought to hold the 
friendship of the colonies on the Upper Mississippi 



INTRIGUE AND UNREST. 141 

and the Ohio by granting valuable trade privileges 
to some of their most influential men. Nor did he 
neglect to keep alive the schemes for drawing these 
disaffected colonies away from their allegiance to 
the Federal Government and into the arms of the 
Spanish king. On the other hand the French 
minister to the United States, the "fiery and in- 
discreet" Monsieur Genet, was making every effort 
to organize a force in Kentucky and Tennessee to 
be led by him in person against the Spanish in 
Louisiana. Thus, menaced from within his prov- 
ince and without, Carondelet was in no enviable 
situation. The storm blew over, however, without 
brineino: disaster. The Federal Government dis- 
covered M. Genet's schemes and cut them short by 
procuring his recall. De la Chasie, who had been 
Genet's agent in Kentucky, quickly abandoned the 
field and returned to France, and all the expeditions 
theretofore planned fell to the ground. 

Carondelet, seeing all danger of insurrection ended 
and the threatened invasion thus happily prevented, 
bent all his energies to the task of winning over 
the w'estern territories of the United States. The 
English in Canada were laboring assiduously, at 
the same time, to get possession of that field. 
The Ohio Valley was invested with the emissaries 
of these insidious and crafty schemers. All this 
was without notable result, however ; the finely laid 



142 INTRIGUE AND UNREST. 

plans found no permanent support among loyal 
Americans. 

Preparations for war are but poor encourage- 
ment to the industries of a weak and debt-ridden 
country. The extensive operations of Carondelet 
in putting Louisiana into a state of defence and his 
expensive system of dealing with his spies, emissa- 
ries and coadjutors in the United States, had not 
tended to engendei- a healthy spirit of agriculture 
and commerce. 

It was peculiarly fortunate that just at this point 
of time should have been discovered the true source 
of prosperity for the long-suffering province. 

In 1795 Etienne Bore demonstrated how im- 
mensely profitable was the industry of sugar 
making. He had been an indigo planter, his pos- 
sessions lying six miles above New Orleans on the 
left bank of the river, but his agricultural ventures 
had not been crowned with satisfactory results, and 
he determined to risk his own fortune and that of 
his wife on an effort to establish cane-culture and 
sugar-making in Louisiana. 

Hitherto sugar-cane had not been successfully 
used in the province in any better manufacture 
than that of syrup-making and the distillation of 
a vile spirituous drink called tafia. The processes 
of evaporation and granulation had not been intro- 
duced, consequently the small amount of sugar 



INTRIGUE AND UNREST. 143 

made was very dark, wax-like and subject to great 
shrinkage on account of its bulk being saturated 
with syrup. 

Bore proceeded with great intelligence and fore- 
thought, but also without regard for the possible 
consequences. Should failure result instead of the 
success he so confidently anticipated, his ruin must 
have been complete. But he succeeded even be- 
yond his expectations, and his crop of cane when 
reduced to sugar sold for twelve thousand dollars. 
Here was the first bud of that amazing wealth which 
afterward flowered forth over all the lower valley 
of the Mississippi. A mighty industry arose which 
o-ave color to the civilization of Louisiana and laid 
broad the foundations of a commonwealth at once 
the most picturesque and the most steadfast in its 
elements to be found in America. 

The French revolution drove many noble citi- 
zens from France. Louisiana became the place of 
refuge for a number of these, and they brought with 
them a considerable following. Thus, although 
the means of education had been almost wholly 
neglected in New Orleans and its dependent set- 
tlements, there was a certain courtly politeness 
which influenced the manners of the better class 
of the people and made the home life of some of 
them charmingly refined and engaging. Still by 
far the orreater number of those who formed the 



144 INTRIGUE AND UNREST 

population of New Orleans consisted of persons as 
unscrupulous as they were rough and dangerous. 
The city itself was not fair to look upon, though 
much had been done for it. Carondelet cut a canal 
all the way from Lake Ponchartrain to the ramparts 
of the town. By this means small vessels were able 
to receive and unload cargoes at this point, thus 
avoiding by way of the lake and its safer outlets, 
the difficult navigation of the Mississippi's mouth. 
That a good deal of smuggling was indulged in 
at this time can scarcely be doubted. There was 
everything to incite it; it was highly profitable and 
but few barriers were placed in its way. 

The increase in the number of slaves, while it 
added much to the success of agriculture in a 
swampy and malarious country, was attended with 
a danger more to be dreaded than all the others put 
together. A rumor of the revolt in St. Domingo 
had reached the ears of the slaves on the planta- 
tions of Louisiana; and in the lonely parish of Pointe 
Coupee the dusky half-savages planned a massacre 
of their owners. The negroes outnumbered the 
whites in this parish, and its remote situation ren- 
dered the bloody task an easy one, if but the secret 
could be kept until the blows were ready to fall. 
It is hard at this time to realize the awful nature 
of the peril hanging over those scattered and help- 
less families. The men and the children were 



INTRIGUE AND UNREST. 145 

to be killed outright ; the women were to be sub- 
jected to a fate an hundred-fold more horrible. 
Everything was ready, the plans all perfected, when 
by the merest chance (growing out of a disagree- 
ment among the leaders) the secret was divulged 
and the dreadful deed prevented. A very effective 
example was made of the ringleaders by hanging 
them by the neck until they were dead, and then 
leaving their dangling bodies for several days in full 
view of the public, at many points along the river 
and elsewhere. This struck terror into the hearts 
of the negroes and put an end to the danger they 
had engendered by their plotting. Some whites 
who were suspected of complicity in the movement 
were transported, although their guilt was not shown 
by any competent evidence. 

By a treaty signed the twentieth of October, 
1795, between Spain and the United States, the 
boundary line between the territories of the two 
powers in America was settled, at least nominally. 
The United States took possession of all the area 
east of the Mississippi as far south as the thirty- 
first degree of latitude, leaving Spain master of 
all the territory west of the river, and also of the 
area south of the thirty-first degree of latitude. 
The Mississippi River for its entire width and 
from its source to the sea, was declared forever 
open to all the citizens of the United States. 



146 INTRIGUE AND UNREST. 

This treaty, however, did not put an end 
to Carondelet's tampering with the people of 
Kentucky and Tennessee. He clung with great 
tenacity to his hope that some of the western 
colonies of the United States could be induced 
to sever their connection with the Federal 
Government and cast their lot with Louisiana. 
Wilkinson and others reaped, or tried to reap, 
a rich harvest by means of this hobby. The 
people of Kentucky and of the other western 
territories refused to listen to these schemes, and 
they were at length abandoned, but not till after 
the Spanish Government had long delayed carrying 
out the terms of the treaty. For reasons of his 
own Wilkinson adroitly withdrew from negotiating 
with Carondelet's agent and set himself to favoring, 
in every way that he could, the interests of his own 
country. 

On the thirteenth of October, 1795, a French 
privateer entered the mouth of the Mississippi and 
sent some men ashore who took possession of the 
Balize and destroyed all its property. A force was 
dispatched from New Orleans to attack them, but 
they set sail and avoided an encounter. This was 
the only damage suffered by Louisiana on account 
of the French War. 

In the autumn of the following year an epidemic 
broke out in New Orleans ; probably it was a 



INTRIGUE AND UNREST. I47 

malignant kind of malarial fever, though the fact 
that a black vomit is described as one of its 
symptoms signifies that it may have been the 
terrible yellow fever which has since that day so 
often and with such terrible results visited the 
ereat citv on the Gulf. 

The sanitary condition of New Orleans was 
necessarily bad. The river flooded the streets of 
the lower part at every freshet and the drainage, 
even in the drycst season, was wholly inadequate. 
A moat of stagnant water surrounded the wall, the 
canal itself was little better than a ditch, and behind 
the city was a vast swamp stretching away to the 
bayou. In summer the air swarmed with mosqui- 
toes and other pestiferous insects, while the stench 
rising from the ponds and marshes was suggestive 
of all manner of disease. 

A Spanish bishop, in a letter dated at New 
Orleans in 1795, incidentally mentioned that there 
were at that time in the city a number of schools, 
only one of which was Spanish. The French 
schools displeased him because they appeared to 
be inculcating principles too decidedly French. 
The morals of the city were, he said, very bad ; 
the people permitted their children to "read books 
written against religion and the State," and at the 
dinner-table they made use of "the most shame- 
ful, lascivious and sacrilegious songs." Indeed all 



148 INTRIGUE AND UNREST. 

accounts agree in describing New Orleans as a 
convivial city, not given to tlie observance of 
all the moral laws, thoroughly French in its 
tastes, and altogether independent of leading- 
strings socially, politically and religiously. It 
was the favored resort of the lawless. Some 
pirates lived there, not a few smugglers, and a 
large number of adventurous persons — political 
and criminal refugees from the Old World. A 
motley population, picturesque from every point of 
view, actuated in a large degree by motives that for- 
bade moral rectitude. 

In describing the city at that time, General 
CoUot wrote : — 

" Its defensive works are composed of five small 
forts and a battery, arranged thus : on the river 
front at each end is a fort commanding the 
stream ; . . . between these two works, before 
the chief street of the city, is a great battery com- 
manding the river ... In the rear of the city 
on the land side are three forts." 

Collot shrewdly remarks that Carondelet probably 
erected these works more with a view to overawing 
his rebellious subjects than with the belief that they 
would prove an efficient defense for the city in case 
of attack. This doubtless expressed the main truth 
of the matter, for a close study of all the docu- 
ments bearing upon the history of the time during 



INTRIGUE AND UNREST. 1 49 

which Carondclet was governor fails to show that 
Louisiana ever was in any real danger of invasion 
from either one of the enemies the good baron 
pretended so mucli to fear. 

Carondelet was not averse to turning a penny,, 
and W^ilkinson showed him how, under cover of 
a secret compact of trade and a pubHc pretence 
of hatching rebellion, the tobacco of Kentucky 
and Tennessee could be turned to excellent pecu- 
niary account. The jolly baron was true to his 
king in religion and politics, but when it came 
to money he was inclined to look out sharply for 
hinibclf. He tried very hard to foment a revolt in 
the West, yet at the same time he could not see 
any harm in making his schemes pay a good 
dividend. General Wilkinson's rule of action lay 
on the same plane. His process was double. To 
Carondelet he favored secession and annexation, 
to the French he hinted revolt and freedom, and 
while working both parties he " feathered his own 
nest " by vigorously pushing his tobacco trade 
and taking all the gold that the Spanish would 
give him to defray imaginary expenses and to 
corrupt mythical personages of high influence in 
politics. 

During the years 1796-97 the Spanish authori- 
ties exhausted every means for delaying a confir- 
mation of the boundary line as set forth in the 



150 INTRIGUE AND UNREST. 

treaty of 1783. By one pretext and another, they 
avoided the surrender of the Natchez territory and 
continued to hold the miHtary posts therein. Not 
until the twenty-third of March, 1798, was the 
final step taken by which the Federal Government 
was permitted to occupy in full the province 
of Mississippi. 

The Baron Carondelet was appointed governor 
of the Mexican provinces, and on the twenty-sixth 
of July, 1797, Don Manuel Gayoso de Lemos 
having received the commission of governor of 
Louisiana, took up his abode in New Orleans. 
In the year following, after having evacuated 
the fort at Natchez, he issued an order directing 
the commissioners of Spain to meet those of the 
Federal Government at Bayou Tunica and begin 
the survey of the boundary line in accordance 
with the treaty so long set at naught. Soon after 
this we find the newly made territory of Mississippi 
occupied by a Federal force and, strange to say, 
with Gen. Wilkinson in command. The man who 
but lately had been playing the role of traitor, spy, 
insurrectionist and smuggler, was now chief com- 
mander on the border and was building a fort at 
Loftus Heights just above the boundary line. 
The new governor of Louisiana, seeing the hope 
of detaching Kentucky and Tennessee fall dead 
at his feet, finally turned back to the old policy 




IIIE SALE OF LOUISIANA. 



INTRIGUE AND UNREST. 153 

of restricting immigration and of discriminating 
against Protestants, 

By the treaty signed at Madrid in 1795, it had 
been stipulated that the citizens of the United 
States should not only have free navigation of the 
Mississippi River, but that they should also have 
the right to deposit in New Orleans all their prod- 
uce during the space of three years. This limit, 
it was agreed, was to be extended by the Spanish 
Government, or instead of an extension of time, 
a new point on the island of New Orleans was to 
be designated for such depot. But at the expira- 
tion of the three years Morales, the Spanish in- 
tendant at New Orleans, declined to permit further 
deposits there, and refused to designate another 
place in accordance with the stipulation. This 
action aroused the people of the West ; a storm 
of resentment broke forth and the government of 
the United States was forced to make a threaten- 
ing demonstration in the direction of Louisiana. 
Three regiments of the regular army were at once 
dispatched to the Ohio. The people flew to arms. 
Invasion appeared imminent. 

At this time New Orleans was full of spies, ad- 
venturers and political intriguers and lobbyists from 
the United States. This restless element managed 
to keep up a feeling of jealousy and avaricious 
envy between Gayoso and Morales. Wilkinson 



154 INTRIGUE AND UNREST. 

visited New Orleans in the summer of 1799, and 
went thence to Washington to report upon the 
state of things. During his stay in the capital of 
Louisiana he held high carousal with Gayoso, in 
the course of which the Kentuckian and the Span- 
iard became very communicative to each other ; 
but, as might have been expected, the Kentuckian's 
capacity for resisting the effects of brandied con- 
viviality enabled him to secure the advantage in 
the exchange of secrets. In fact, Gayoso never 
recovered from the debauch, but died soon after 
of a fever induced by his excesses. Wilkinson 
appears to have escaped in good condition with 
undiminished appetency for further feats of a like 
nature. 

The Marquis de Casa Calvo succeeded Gayoso 
as o-overnor ad interim, and on the first of 
January, 1800, Don Ramon Lopez y' Angullo 
took the office of intendant. Lopez soon received 
from his Government orders to remove the inter- 
dict issued by Gayoso and to restore to the West- 
ern people the right of deposit at New Orleans. 
These orders he promptly obeyed, thus reviving 
good feelings between his province and the United 
States. Trade revived ; immigration increased ; 
agriculture, relieved from the ban, made the most 
rapid advances in all the districts of Louisiana. 
People from the United States poured into the 



INTRIGUE AND UNREST. 155 

rich delta and began to acquire a hold upon very 
much of the best land. The cultivation of suear- 

o 

cane and the manufacture of sugar attracted wide 
notice, and the interest of men of enterprise and 
sagacity was enlisted in the development of this 
new and promising industry. 

The deluge of immigration startled the Span- 
iards. They saw to what it was swiftly tending. 
A few more years and this tide would rise too high 
to be resisted and Louisiana would be lost to the 
king, lost to the holy religion, given over to free- 
dom, republicanism and ruin. 

In June, 1801, Casa Calvo was superseded as 
governor by Don Juan Manuel de Salcedo, and 
Morales succeeded Lopez as intendant. On the 
eighteenth of July in the following year the king 
ordered that no more grants of land be given to 
citizens of the United States. This effectually 
killed the commerce of the Mississippi River, and 
the indignation of the Western people knew no 
bounds. The spirit of the great American nation 
was beginning to assert the right to dominate, 
even in Louisiana, and it was strongly inclined to 
over-ride the claims of the Spanish Government. 
Salcedo and Morales felt that the time was fast 
approaching when the hold of their Government 
would have to be loosed. Rumors, apparently 
well founded, were afloat that the irresistible 



156 INTRIGUE AND UNREST. 

genius of Napoleon was wringing the province 
from Spain and that this meant a division of the 
territories between France and the United States. 
To a large majority of Louisiana's population 
these were thrillingly welcome rumors. The very 
thought of once more becoming the subjects of 
France was enough to intoxicate them with delight. 

The treaty of Ildefonso, however, which had been 
ratified at Madrid on the twenty-first of March, 1801, 
had been kept a secret. Napoleon had hoped to 
occupy Louisiana with a strong army consisting 
of twenty-five thousand men, together with a fleet 
to guard the coast; but his implacable and ever 
watchful foe, England, discovered his design and 
thwarted it. But by the terms of the treaty, the 
colony and province of Louisiana had gone into 
his hands. He must take possession and hold 
it, or he must see England become its master. 
Pressed on every side at that time by wars and 
political complications and well understanding that 
it would endanger his power for him to undertake 
a grand American enterprise, he gladly opened 
negotiations with the United States looking to 
the cession of Louisiana to that Government. 

While correspondence and conferences on this 
subject were going on between the Federal Gov- 
ernment and the French consul, the people of 
Louisiana continued in a state of excitement and 



INTRIGUE AND UNREST. 1 57 

expectancy. They were not informed that nego- 
tiations had proceeded any farther than to a con- 
firmation of the treaty of Ildefonso by which their 
country had been ceded by Spain to France. 
They were therefore anxiously waiting for the day 
to arrive when the latter power should take posses- 
sion. It was a time of suspense and uncertainty, too, 
on the part of the local government of Louisiana. 
The Spanish governor was waiting and expecting 
and looking — but no tidings of a definite nature 
came to him. All was mystery. 

Neither the First Consul of France nor the 
Government of the United States was willing that 
the king of Spain should even suspect what was 
o-oino- on until it should be too late for him to 
interfere successfully. They both well knew that 
Napoleon had agreed with Spain that Louisiana 
should not be ceded to any other power, and they 
therefore wished to play their little game of bad 
faith somewhat in the dark. They consoled them- 
selves with the ancient salve, seeing that good was 
to come of their evil-doing. On the part of the 
French the memory of the treaty signed in igno- 
miny when in 1762 France had ceded Louisiana to 
Spain, was hateful in the extreme. They never had 
ratified that act in their hearts and had always 
viewed it as a disgraceful piece of folly by which 
the honor of all Frenchmen had suffered. To the 



158 INTRIGUE AND UNREST. 

United States the acquisition of so great a terri- 
tory, with the full control of the Mississippi River 
forever, was not to be pushed aside for any merely 
technical reason. Diplomacy very quickly sur- 
mounted so small an obstacle as the promise made 
by the French to the Spanish Government in the 
treaty of Ildefonso. A price was fixed by the First 
Consul and the terms were all arrangred with the 

O 

utmost dispatch. At last the territory of Louisiana 
was about to find a permanent government and, 
with it, permanent freedom. Her vast area was to 
be carved into pieces and the real Louisiana, whose 
story it is ours to outline, was to emerge from the 
mist of romance and uncertainty into the full, 
strong light of American liberty. 

The treaty of cession was signed on the thirtieth 
of April, 1803, the United States agreeing to pay 
France sixty million francs as the purchase price of 
the territory.* Pausing to glance at this strange 
transaction by which one republic sells outright to 
another republic a whole country without in the least 
consulting the wishes of the inhabitants whose alle- 
giance and all of whose political and civil rights are 
changed thereby we are tempted to wonder if the 



* The French " figure" for its province was at first eighty million francs, with the fur- 
ther understanding that the United States should assume certain claims due to American citi- 
zens and reckoned at twenty million francs more. The price finally agreed upon was, as 
stated above, sixty million francs: and, in addition, the sum due American citizens ("The 
French spoliation claims") was assumed by the United States. The treaty of April was 
ratified by Napoleon in May, 1803, and by the Senate of the United States in October. Ed. 



INTRIGUE AND UNREST. 159 

republic of the United States could to-day sell 
Louisiana with the same impunity that attended 
the purchase ! She bought the country and its 
people, just as she might have bought a desert 
island with its goats ; why could she not sell them 
to-day and ask no permission until after they had 
been delivered all in a lump to the buyer? 

With a smile at the foolishness of our question 
we turn to view with feelings of patriotic pride the 
magnificent results of that famous purchase. Here 
was a vast domain whose internal wealth was as 
yet little dreamed of and whose importance to the 
United States could not be over-estimated, bought 
for the paltry sum of sixty million francs. 

The great Napoleon remarked, at the time of 
the transfer, that he was ceding to the American 
Union a domain whose greatness was immeasur- 
able and whose maritime advantages would soon 
enable it to humble the magnificent naval power 
of Great Britain. He was a grandiloquent man, 
but he did not overstate possibilities. It is true 
that the United States had never shown a really 
great navy ; but at need she can present to the 
world the much over-looked fact that it is easy 
for her to build a fleet within her great rivers and 
send it forth incomparably equipped without a 
stick of wood or an ounce of metal in it or upon 
it which has been imported from a foreign country. 



l6o INTRIGUE AND UNREST. 

But while this bargain and sale had been rushed 
to a successful end, the Spanish authorities at New 
Orleans did not know of it and they were impa- 
tiently awaiting the arrival of a French delegation 
which was to accept the transfer of Louisiana to 
the republic of France. It was understood that 
General Victor had been appointed to act for the 
French Government, and when on the twenty-fourth 
of March, 1803, M. Laussat, the prefect appointed 
for the colony by Napoleon, arrived he confirmed 
the matter, and he also announced the form of 
government prepared for the province. General 
Victor, he said, had sailed from Holland late in 
January. This proved to be a mistake, for the 
French fleet was so closely watched by an English 
squadron in the channel that it was impossible for 
Victor to put to sea. 

The expedition was therefore abandoned by 
Napoleon. America was a long way off and it 
would be hard to hold Louisiana, especially so 
long as England was his enemy. Why not sell 
the province } He did sell it, and never did any 
nation make a finer bargain than that consum- 
mated by the United States. The full control of 
the Mississippi River and of all the great valley 
drained by it, passed into the hands of the young 
republic and insured the control, at an early day, of 
the heart of the continent. What a teeming popu- 



INTRIGUE AND UNREST. l6l 

lation was to flood the whole area from the Atlantic 
to the Pacific, what prosperity was to come, what 
discoveries, what inventions, what commerce, what 
wars ! Little did New Orleans dream of Packen- 
ham and Jackson, or of Farragut and the thunder 
of the iron-clads, or of Butler and the reign of ter- 
ror, or of Kellogg and the fourteenth of Septem- 
ber, 1874. Indeed the colonists of Louisiana were 
not taken into the confidences of their own time. 
Napoleon, always able to keep his own secrets, felt 
the need of unusual reticence in making the trans- 
fer of his American dominion to the United States, 
and the latter government was too well aware of 
the precarious tenure of France to wish for any- 
thino- like neQ;otiations with Spain touching the 
territory in question. It was a crisis in the history 
of America, the turning-point in the career of 
Louisiana, when the slightest slip in the move- 
ment of the world's affairs could have changed the 
whole future of the Federal union. The point was 
passed, however, with little difficulty. A few mil- 
lion dollars, a few strokes of the pen, a discreet 
silence, until the arrival of the proper moment, 
and then prompt action secured what, twenty years 
later, could not have been bought with all the blood 
and treasure of the nation. 



CHAPTER VII. 



UNDER THE STARS AND STRIPES. 




HE population of Lou- 
'■ isiana, exclusive o f 
Indians, was, in 1803, 
about fifty-five thou- 
sand. New Orleans 
had begun to look 
like a city with its 
quaint and beautiful, 
if rambling and primi- 
tive houses, its tree- 



shaded streets, its clumps of palmettos and its 

wilderness of roses. Twelve thousand people 

were within its walls, and although they were, 

in most regards and taken as a body, a reckless, 

gambling, dueling, immoral people, they were 

restrained by the hand of a strong government 

and by the high example and gentle influence 

of not a few excellent and cultured families. Of 

necessity society had begun here, in the days of 

Bienville, around a nucleus of galley slaves, bandits, 

half-breed Indians, trappers and aimless adven- 

162 



UNDER THE STARS AND STRIFES. 163 

turers of the lowest order among men. The 
women, as we have seen, with the exception of a 
few ladies the wives of of^cers, were in the first 
place exiles thrown out from the French houses of 
correction. Some squaws were added and not a 
few neo-ro women became the so-called wives of the 
men. It was a drinking, carousing, excitement- 
loving population. We are given scattered but 
interesting glimpses of the drinking-rooms, the 
gaming places, the theater and the public meeting- 
places of the people ; but the chronicles of society 
are contained in meager and accidental paragraphs 
appearing in official documents and in the romantic 
sketches written by travelers, priests and traders. 

The administration of the Spanish authorities 
had been upon the whole, able and, from the 
peculiar Spanish point of view, generous and en- 
lightened to a degree. Against the sleepless and 
insidious hatred of the French they had opposed 
merciless force when necessary, pacific politeness 
and tolerance when safe. 

Corruption in office was practiced in the most 
open and unblushing way, by both the French and 
the Spanish officials, from the days of Bienville 
down to the close of foreign domination in Louis- 
iana. As a matter of course this political loose- 
ness had a marked effect on the development of 
New Orleans as a city and as a capital, making it 



1 64 UNDER THE STARS AND STRIFES. . 

the centre about which gathered and crystallized 
the controlling influences, for good and for bad, that 
moved the affairs of the province and molded the 
character of its people. Slave labor was there 
from the first in its worst form. The negroes, or 
at least many of them, were savages fresh from 
Africa, without any of those better traits that 
characterized the slaves fifty years later. The 
" black codes " now and again adopted by the 
various governors, were of a nature applicable only 
to the control of the most vicious criminals. The 
masters were given a police power over their 
slaves which was practically unlimited and which 
was used with arbitrary malignancy or questionable 
leniency as the whim or the temper of the individual 
dictated. The climate was not stimulating and the 
temptation to seek ease and to indulge in enerva- 
ting practices was very great. Still the people as 
a whole were no worse than were those that the 
frontier colonies of that day usually held. 

What is now Jackson Square in New Orleans 
was, in 1803, and from the first had been the Place 
d'Armes. Near this rectangle stood the various 
government buildings, the church and other ecclesi- 
astical edifices. The UrsuHne nuns had a nunnery 
hard by and there were a good many residences of 
a substantial if not imposing sort, scattered along 
the river " coasts " above and below the town. 



UNDER THE STARS AND STRIFES. 165 

Since 1728 the improvement in public morals had 
been fortified by the introduction of virtuous and re- 
fined women. A " cargo " of young women had been 
shipped from France, consigned to New Orleans, 
and these girls have gone into history and romance 
under the name of " Filles a la Cassette," on ac- 
count of the little box or casket of clothes borne 
by each. These " girls with the trunk " may have 
had their origin in a prolific imagination, but to this 
day it is an honor if a Creole family can fairly 
trace its genealogy back to one of them. Indeed, 
when we consider that, throughout the eighty-seven 
years durini^ which New Orleans was under for- 
eign control, a steady though slender stream drawn 
from the best blood of France and Spain had 
trickled into Louisiana, we can understand how, 
gradually, the population imperceptibly grew to be 
a proud, noble and intellectual one, with a social 
and domestic system as exclusive and peculiar as 
it was picturesque and beautiful. 

We have seen that Laussat, the prefect sent by 
Napoleon, arrived at New Orleans on the twenty- 
sixth of March. He was received wdth great pomp 
by the Spanish authorities ; but to his surprise the 
French inhabitants held aloof and appeared to have 
no w^ord or sio-n of welcome for him. The reason 

O 

for this lay in the fact that a rumor had become 
prevalent charging the First Consul with a design 



1 66 UNDER THE STARS AND S2RIFES. 

to free the slaves in the province. The disastrous 
result of freedom in St. Domingo was a heavy load 
on the memory of some citizens of Louisiana who 
had formerly lived on that unfortunate island, and 
who had brought their slaves with them to their 
new homes. From lip to lip had passed the word 
of doubt, fear and gloomy anticipation. The joy 
with which the first thought of returning to their 
French allegiance had been hailed had quickly dis- 
appeared. It were far better, the planters thought, 
to remain under Spanish rule than to have the 
dear old country for which they had so long sighed, 
send over an agent to inculcate the doctrines that 
had destroyed the prosperity of the other French 
colonies. 

Laussat found Casa Calvo, the Spanish repre- 
sentative, very polite and courteous in all his com- 
munications but secretly working to throw in his 
way every possible barrier toward a kindly under- 
standing with the people. Every effort had been 
made to procure from the colonists an expression 
favoring adhesion to the Spanish government and 
repudiating the cession of the province. 

Casa Calvo was a wealthy nobleman with every 
means at his command for courting the favor of 
society in New Orleans and the surrounding coun- 
try. No sooner had Laussat arrived, therefore, 
than the Spanish dignitary began a series of elabo- 




«*l il« 



I 



\ \l 



miV' ii 



UNDER THE STARS AND STRIFES. 169 

rately expensive dinners to which were invited all 
the leaders of society. With courtly grace and 
dio-nity and yet with a winning warmth of manner 
Casa Calvo made each guest feel himself especially 
favored. Laussat noted the effect of this hospital- 
ity and determined to offset it in kind. The result 
was a battle of dinners, a campaign of soups and 
viands and wines. The Spaniard had the advan- 
tage by reason of his wealth, and poor Laussat was 
o-rievously worried. He felt that the French Gov- 
ernment was suffering in the estimation of those 
whom he most wished to impress favorably, and 
moreover he saw that his noble antagonist was 
greatly enjoying the situation. 

In the meantime no tidings came from France, 
no word from the fleet of General Victor ; but from 
some source a rumor of the cession of Louisiana 
to the United States crept through the colonies. 
Laussat tried in vain to discover what if any foun- 
dation there was for such a story, and at length he 
wrote to his oovernment touching what he deemed 
to be a gross calumny against the honor of the 
P'irst Consul. A few day later, however, he re- 
ceived direct from France full confirmation of the 
rumor. With it, too, came instructions to deliver 
the province over to the commissioners of the 
United States so soon as Casa Calvo should have 
delivered the same to him. 



I70 UNDER THE STARS AND STRIPES. 

It was the thirtieth of November, 1803. The flag 
of Spain was waving from the tall staff on the pub- 
lic square. A vast crowd, aware that an important 
event was at hand, had gathered to look on. The 
streets were full, the housetops were crowded and 
every balcony and window was packed with eager 
observers. The Spanish soldiers gaily uniformed 
and drawn up in solid order filled the square in 
front of the hall. 

In the presence of this throng Laussat presented 
his credentials and received from Casa Calvo in 
due form the keys of New Orleans and possession 
of Louisiana. There was a crash of artillery and 
the flag of Spain began to descend from the staff. 
While this was passing the crowd was swayed by 
a conflict of emotions. Many there were who re- 
o-retted the chano-e and feared the worst conse- 
quences; some thought the time had come for 
revolution ; but the majority stood passively look- 
ing on unable to see much to care for in the oc- 
casion. The flag of the First Consul, the banner 
of the young French republic, climbed to the top 
of the staff while another artillery salute boomed off 
across the stately river. So ended the ceremony. 

Laussat immediately published an address, in 
the form of a proclamation, in which he set forth 
the terms of the treaty by which the province of 
Louisiana had been sold to the United States. He 



UNDER THE STARS AND STRIPES. 1 71 

particularly called attention to Article Third of 
that treaty which guaranteed to the citizens of the 
province the free enjoyment of their liberties and 
property and the unrestrained exercise of their 
religion. 

At the same time he began the reorganization of 
the government by appointing provisional officers 
from among the leading citizens of Louisiana. 
These were well chosen and the effect upon the 
people was reassuring, although the persons so 
honored were not quick to accept the appoint- 
ments. Etienne Bore was made mayor of New 
Orleans, and Bellachasse was given command of 
the militia. 

Governor Claiborne of Mississippi and General 
Wilkinson (who invariably presented himself w^hen- 
ever there was anything on foot in Louisiana) were 
the commissioners appointed by the Federal Gov- 
ernment to receive the ceded province from the 
hands of Laussat. Wilkinson arrived in New 
Orleans on the twenty-third of November. He 
was on his w^ay from Florida to Fort Adams, w4iere 
he was to meet Governor Claiborne ; he had an 
interview with Laussat and it was determined be- 
tween them that every precaution should be taken 
against treachery on the part of the Spaniards. 
This, however, as the sequel proved, was wholly un- 
necessary. Casa Calvo, it is true, took pains to cause 



172 UNDER THE STARS AND STRIPES. 

the irascible Frenchman all possible uneasiness ; 
but he offered no resistance to the formal transfer 
of the province. 

Laussat appointed Villere, a son of the former 
insuro-ent of that name, one of the ten members of 
the new municipality. " It is with a true feeling of 
joy," he wrote to the French Government, " that I 
put in authority M. Villere, the son of one of 
O'Reilly's most interesting victims, himself much 
esteemed in the province." 

Stino-ine with wounded pride, on account of 
Casa Calvo's social victories in the recent din- 
ino- tournament, and desiring to show a spirit of 
independence, Laussat flatly refused to permit 
the Spanish Cabildo or the military officers of the 
Spanish militia to take any part in the ceremony 
of transfer, until he had recommissioned them. 

Claiborne and Wilkinson marched from Fort 
Adams and encamped two miles out from New 
Orleans on the seventeenth of December. Early 
the next day they sent an officer to inform Laussat 
of their arrival and to ask him to set the time 
for the conference preliminary to the final act of 
transfer. 

The town was again filled to overflowing with 
people from every part of the surrounding country. 
Laussat sent out a company of his improvised 
troops to meet the United States commissioners 



UNDER THE STARS AND STRIPES. 1/3 

and conduct them through the gates. The cere- 
mony was made very brief. Governor Claiborne 
presented his credentials and those of General Wil- 
kinson, a salute of twenty-one guns was fired from 
the forts and then the French commissioner deliv- 
ered to Claiborne the keys of the city. As the ban- 
ner of France began to descend from the top of the 
staff in the square, the flag of America rose from 
the bottom. The two met midway. A gun was 
fired to signal the forts. The batteries responded 
with all their guns. The people, however, were 
quiet, showing no enthusiasm. Casa Calvo and 
his ofHcial coadjutors had scattered the seeds of 
distrust and apprehension in the hearts of many. 
A considerable number, too, were stanch royalists 
and bitterly opposed to passing under the flag of 

a republic. 

Claiborne hastened to issue a proclamation dated 
the twentieth of December, 1803, in which he gave 
an outline of the treaties by which Louisiana had 
passed from Spain to France and from France to 
the United States, and proceeded to explain the 
general features of the laws under which the prov- 
ince henceforth would be governed. He proclaimed 
that the liberty, the property and the religion of 
every citizen would be respected and protected. 
For the time being he kept in their places all the 
civil oflicers of the city and province, the collectors 



174 UNDER THE STARS AND STRIFES. 

of revenues excepted, reserving to himself the 
powers of chief executive of the province until a 
regular territorial government could be formed 
under the laws of the United States. 

The title to the vast country known as Louis- 
iana was now vested irrevocably in the young and 
vigorous republic of America. A rough inventory 
was made from which it appeared that the popu- 
lation of the province was between fifty and sixty 
thousand souls, exclusive of Indians. New Orleans 
alone held nearly twelve thousand. The annual 
revenues of the city were $19,278, its expenses less 
than $10,000. The agricultural products of the 
colonies amounted annually to 3000 pounds of in- 
digo, 20,000 bales of cotton, 5000 hogsheads of 
sugar and 5000 casks of molasses. The exports 
were about 40,000 tons of the value of $2,158,000, 
the imports were valued at $2,500,000 per annum, 
and the territorial expenses were about $800,000 
for each year, while the revenues were less than 
$120,000, thus showing that in 1802 the provin- 
cial government had been a heavy load to carry. 

It remained to be seen, now that the Federal Gov- 
ernment had accepted the burden, whether the load 
would continue to increase, as it had been doing 
ever since d' Iberville first set his foot on the shore 
of the great gulf. The young republic was in no 
condition to shoulder a heavy financial weight in 



UNDER THE STARS AND STRIFES. 175 

addition to the piircliase-price of the territory and 
there would have to be a great change in the 
management of affairs to make the province self- 
supporting. 

When, upon the surrender of the territorial keys 
by Casa Calvo to Laussat, the forts around New 
Orleans were evacuated, there were no troops at 
the French commissioner's disposal and the city 
for a time lay in great danger of falling into the 
hands of the reckless and desperate element of its 
population. The United States Consul, Daniel 
Clarke, Jr., volunteered to take command of a body 
of enthusiastic young Americans for the protection 
of public and private property and the preserva- 
tion of peace and order. In this he was promptly 
and energetically joined by a large body of Creoles, 
the sons of the best families. With this force of 
three hundred men he offered himself to Laussat 
and was of great service in guarding the forts, 
patrolling the city and protecting society. 

In the meantime the people were at a loss just 
how to view what was going on, but the better 
element felt the need of upholding law and enforc- 
ing order, no matter what political change was in 
store for them. 

Claiborne's proclamation gave instant relief to 
many who greatly feared interference with slavery 
and very soon a feeling of security spread among 



176 UNDER THE STARS AND STRIFES. 

the people. At once there was a considerable 
emigration from the North and the American 
spirit began to take firm root in the rich soil of 
Louisiana. 

But what was Louisiana at this time } The 
question cannot be answered. Spain claimed an 
indefinite contraction of the loose boundary lines, 
while the United States contended for the utmost 
stretch of their elastic quality. 

The district of West Florida was held by Spain 
to extend westward to the Pearl River and beyond 
to the Mississippi embracing the posts of Manchac, 
Thompson's Creek and Bayou Sara. This area 
was made into a so-called Spanish province called 
the " Government of Baton Rouge," under the con- 
trol of Lieutenant Governor Grandpre. That part 
of Louisiana west of the Mississippi River reached 
westward to Texas, wherever that was, and north- 
ward and northwestward to some wavering confine 
in the untrodden wilderness. The Ohio Valley and 
the valley of the Upper Mississippi were already 
prosperous and their settlements and towns were 
assuming important dimensions. 

The trade of the great river, with that of all its 
tributaries, was soon to be pouring freely through 
the gates of New Orleans. The eyes of far-seeing 
business men all over the world were suddenly 
turned upon that queer little city in a Mississippi 



UNDER THE STARS AND STRIPES. 177 

swamp. She held the key to the wealth that was 
fast locked in the inexhaustible soil of all that vast 
region, where the cotton and the cane were just 
beginning to disclose how valuable by proper care 
and enterprise slave labor could be made. Many a 
sail was set for this new land and Northern sloop 
and foreign ship alike came to anchor in the great 
river before the levee at New Orleans. 

Soon enough the people of the United States 
felt the fever of fascination that is caught from 
well-told stories of a tropical land where, as the ro- 
mance always runs, one can sit forever under a rose 
bower and eat and drink and be merry without so 
much as a thought of winter, labor, want or death. 
The same song that Law had sung in France, only 
to a different tune, now sent its alluring undertones 
through the stubbornly-tilled regions of the colder 
North. 

Flat-boatmen who went down the river from the 
Illinois, the Missouri or the Kentucky country, came 
back with dreamy stories of how the planters on 
the great Louisiana estates dwelt in luxurious ease 
in their spacious homes surrounded with servants, 
horses, dogs, guns, wines, fruits, flowers and every 
comfort of life. They told of graceful ladies, dark 
and beautiful, gracious and kind, sitting under the 
oranee-trees, or on the vine-covered verandas, 
dressed like queens, with lovely quadroons fanning 



178 UNDER THE STARS AND STRIPES. 

them. They showed conclusively how easy it was 
to o-ain princely fortunes in that land of eternal 
summer-time. And, to the rough fellows who told 
them, these stories did not seem to be untrue ; 
for they had, indeed, seen what they described. 
Many of the so-called coast plantations on the Mis- 
sissippi were, even then, the seats of large and 
luxuriously furnished mansions wherein dwelt peo- 
ple of culture and refinement who spent money 
with lavish freedom and spared no pains to prac- 
tice a hospitality almost bewildering in its propor- 
tions. The "Territory of Orleans," as the Amer- 
ican Congress first named it, was on the tongue of 
almost everybody who felt the necessity of better- 
incr fortune by a change of abode, or who had a 
natural bent for seeking adventure of a mild sort 
in a strange land. 

This was the first acquisition of provincial area 
made by our country, and the very fact that at last 
foreio-n domination in Louisiana had given way to 
a government erected by the American republic, 
added a mighty force to the romance which had 
cluno- so lono- about the sunny, swampy, bloom- 
burdened and pirate-haunted great Southwest. 
In that day railroads were not thought of. The 
rivers were the thoroughfares of travel and com- 
merce from the interior to the seas. We can 
scarcely realize the importance of such a stream as 



UNDER THE STARS AXD STRIFES. 1 79 

the Mississippi at a time when the velocity of its cur- 
rent exactly measured the rate of traffic-movement 
over the largest part of the United States. Our 
exports during the first half of the present century 
were chiefly agricultural products and lumber. A 
tremendous volume of these found ready way to the 
sea through the Mississippi, much of it starting 
from points far up the Ohio, the Illinois, the Ten- 
nessee, the Cumberland and other tributaries. At 
first the system of navigation was rude enough. 
Fleets of flat-boats and keel-boats, clumsy rafts and 
cumbersome barges crept down the slow current 
for days and weeks and months, gradually nearing 
the low-lying, motley, genial and fascinating French 
city that was their destination. 

One feature of Louisiana life, dating from a very 
early point of time, must not be overlooked. A 
considerable number of free negroes, mulattoes, 
qjadroons and other persons of color, formed the 
nucleus around which was slowly formed a nonde- 
script class which grew as surely as did New Orleans 
and the province, and strengthened apace with the 
development of society along the lines early laid 
in the history of colonization. 

From the first there had been a great excess 
of males in the population and many of the care- 
less and lawless men had taken so-called wives 
from amon«v the neo;ro and Indian women brought 



l8o UNDER THE STARS AND STRIPES. 

to New Orleans and the other posts. The children 
of these associations were branded, so to speak, 
and set apart for a life which to this day is abso- 
lutely unique in the world. The free person of 
color came to be a floating compromise between 
the negro slave and the free white person ; not free 
enough to be to all intents and purposes a citizen, 
and yet sufficiently free to hover along the line of 
an indefined equality, touching the white margin of 
society only to contaminate and to be contaminated. 
A condition of this kind once established in an 
isolated community grows with the growth of 
population and sends its cancerous poison farther 
and farther along the veins of society. Writers in 
every department of literature have touched this 
subject only to exaggerate its effect. The truth is 
bad enough. The best people of New Orleans, 
the true representatives of its social texture, were 
not o-uilty of these moral infractions. The veins 
of the hundreds of old and justly influential families 
have never been contaminated directly or indirectly. 
It is a burning injustice that has so long insinuated 
against the true Creole population of New Orleans 
this foul and wicked libel. It is well-known by 
those who have studied the subject carefully, that 
the system of loose morals which existed in New 
Orleans was largely the work of boatmen, traders, 
gamblers and speculators who constituted the tran- 



UNDER THE STARS AND STRIFES. l8l 

sient and adventurous part of the city's population. 
That there were persons of high local standing 
and of great influence who indulged in debasing 
practices cannot be denied ; but these were the ex- 
ceptions to the rule. The Creoles of New Orleans 
are now and always have been a people of virtue, 
of honor, of steadfast strength of purpose and of 
beautiful domestic purity. The free people of color 
constituted a class largely given to a life of loosely- 
defined morals. It was their women who filled the 
bagnios and kept the houses of assignation, or con- 
sorted to the best possible advantage in questionable 
relations with the men who cared to spend money 
freely while sojourning in the city. 

This is the lonQ- and the short statement of the 
simple truth freed from that melodramatic coloring 
so much affected by historical romancers. New 
Orleans is not now and never has been a worse 
city than New York or Boston, than Chicago or 
St. Louis. It is now and it always has been very 
different from those cities (in that it never has 
been more nor less than French in its chief charac- 
teristics) but the difference is one of race-origin 
rather than one of moral oppositeness. 

New Orleans is . not a city of cellars. She is 
above ground physically and morally. You may 
look through her windows and doors upon her 
trade, her dissipations, her virtues, her crimes, her 



1 82 UNDER THE STARS AND STRIPES. 

charities, her religion. What she is and what she 
does are wholly exposed to the public gaze„ In 
this outright quality she is not American, nor is she 
politic in her self-exposure, but we must remember 
that it is physically impossible for her to have 
underground dives and subterraneous hells. The 
water just below her shallow foundations forces all 
her vices up to the plane of her virtues. Thus it 
is easy for the superficial observer, in comparing 
New Orleans with other American cities, to rush 
hastily into print with a decision overwhelmingly 
condemnatory of the Southern metropolis. In 
glancing over the surface he has seen all of New 
Orleans, while such a view of a Northern city 
scarcely reaches the fringe of its great undergar- 
ment of sin and crime. 

The growth of sugar-planting and sugar-manu- 
facture was very rapid and along with it the culture 
of cotton, rice, Indian corn and tobacco increased 
with amazing rapidity. Slaves were imported in 
great numbers and Louisiana rapidly developed 
into a rich, self-sustaining province. Congress was 
slow to act in her behalf and, as we shall presently 
see, she was treated much as if she had been an 
outlying and not very desirable dependency, 
scarcely worth the attention of statesmen. 

The rapid influx of American people, however, 
and the dissatisfaction of the colonies in the ter- 



UNDER THE STARS AND STRIFES, 1 83 

ritory between Pearl River and the Mississippi, at 
last assumed such form that action became ab- 
solutely necessary. 

In taking leave of the period during which Louis- 
iana was under foreign rule, we glance back over 
ninety-one years of strange vicissitudes. Six times 
had the province changed hands. From the French 
kine to Crozat in 171 2, from Crozat to the West- 
ern Company in 171 7, from this company to Louis 
XV. in 1 731, from Louis xv. to Spain in 1762, from 
Spain to France in 1801, and from France to the 
United States in 1803. 

Up to December 7, 18 10, the Spaniards clung 
to the little territory between the Mississippi 
and Pearl River and then relinquished it only be- 
cause it became too hot for their hands. The re- 
publican spirit was spreading over all the area 
south of the great Northern lakes and with it went 
the courage to take what it wanted and the will 
and the power to hold what it took. It was not a 
good time for a few arrogant Spaniards to set up 
an opposition to a whole colony of fearless Ameri- 
can frontiersmen, bent upon asserting their liberty. 
Andrew Jackson was already in training a little way 
north of the Florida line and the time could be 
foreseen when not only the little " patch of swamp " 
but both Texas and Florida would fall into the 
arms of the growing and vigorous young republic. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE TERRITORY OF ORLEANS. 




H I LE the Spanish 
were yet holding on 
to the territory of 
Baton Rouge which 
lay between the Pearl 
River and the Mississippi, the 
American population therein 
were restless and dissatisfied. 
No opportunity was lost by them to show their 
preference for the Federal Government, and a num- 
ber of unsuccessful attempts were made to organize 
insurrection. Governor Grandpre caused some of 
the leaders to be promptly arrested. Notable among 
these were the three Kemper brothers w4io were 
kidnaped in American territory and put on board 
a boat with a view to their transportation; but 
they were rescued by Lieutenant Wilson of the 
Federal Army at Point Coupee. 

Casa Calvo also continued to press the claims of 
Spain to territory east of the Sabine River and petty 
depredations were committed on the western border. 

184 



THE TERRITORY OF ORLEANS. 1 85 

Governor Claiborne and General Wilkinson used 
every argument in their power to convince the 
United States Government that there was need of 
prompt action with the Spaniards, but nothing- 
effectual was done until a body of troops came into 
Louisiana from Texas and took possession of Adaes 
about fourteen miles from Natchitoches. At the 
same time Don Antonio Codero, governor of Texas, 
at the head of six hundred men was encamped on 
the Trinity River, awaiting reinforcements. To 
meet this invasion Major Porter of the United 
States Army was ordered to move forthwith, should 
the Spaniards refuse to give proper guaranty of 
good faith. 

Don Rodriguez, the commander at Nacogdoches, 
in answer to a communication from Major Porter 
said that no invasion was intended and that the 
rights of American citizens would be respected, but 
that he could not agree to take his patrols out of 
the territory east of the Sabine. Moreover he took 
immediate steps to demand of the people strict 
allegiance to the Spanish king. 

Major Porter hesitated no longer, but moved at 
once upon the post at Adaes by ordering Captain 
Turner to oust the Spanish garrison and remove 
it west of the Sabine. This was done without blood- 
shed. Porter was then reinforced by three com- 
panies and a field battery of four guns from Fort 



1 86 THE TERRITORY OF ORLEANS. 

Adams. This was early in 1806. In June follow- 
ing General Herrera with an army of twelve hun- 
dred Spanish troops, crossed the Sabine and estab- 
lished himself in the region of Bayou Pierre twenty 
miles from Natchitoches. Here he remained until 
the twentieth of September. By that time General 
Wilkinson had organized an army and was ap- 
proaching with great rapidity. Herrera declared 
his determination to fight, but took care to recross 
the river before the Americans arrived. 

Here ao-ain the financial itch attacked Wilkin- 
son and by a shrewd bit of bold diplomacy he tried 
to wring a round sum of money from Governor 
Codero, while at the same time he ably served his 
country in arranging for a settlement of the bound- 
ary line. 

Aaron Burr was just then exciting the West 
with his celebrated scheme for the invasion of Texas 
and Mexico. The name of this arch-conspirator 
was at that time a potent one wherewith to con- 
jure America's timorous neighbor, and Wilkinson 
shrewdly used it to frighten the Spaniards into an 
acceptance of his financial alternative.* Whether 
he succeeded or failed in his effort to extort money 
he certainly forced the Spanish commander to 

* It is claimed that Wilkinson offered, for ^300,000, to " frustrate the designs of-the con- 
spirators and save the provinces of his Catholic Majesty from invasion, employing for that 
purpose the forces and other resources naval and military of the United States." The real 
truth will doubtless never be known, but certainly the career of this American " free-lance," 
known as General Wilkinson, is one of the romances of American history. — Ed. 



THE TERRirORY OF ORLEANS. 1 87 

evacuate all the posts east of the Sabine and to 
withdraw his army from the territory of Louisiana. 

The movements of Burr and his coadjutors were 
becoming bold in the extreme, and appeared to 
threaten New Orleans. Wilkinson therefore hur- 
ried back to that city, which he reached on the 
twenty-fourth of November, and began strengthen- 
ing its defences and making everything ready in a 
quiet way for any emergency that might arise. 

On the tenth of December the army arrived in 
the city from Natchitoches and martial law was 
immediately proclaimed. Fort Adams was over- 
hauled and made ready for defending the river 
against any force that the insurgents could send 
against it and every person in New Orleans or its 
vicinity suspected of being in close sympathy with 
Burr was arrested and held in confinement. 

Burr had sent into New Orleans and its envi- 
rons many emissaries who were secretly agitating 
his scheme. Some of these were men of great 
couraee and influence who lived along the Missis- 
sippi country about Walnut Hills. Their high social 
standing, their acquaintance with the people and 
their knowledge of the country gave them free ac- 
cess to the homes of those they wished to bring 
over to Burr's support. Samuel Swartvvout, Peter 
V. Oci-den and Dr. Erick BoUman were the most 
prominent among these disturbing influences and 



1 88 THE TERRITORY OF ORLEANS. 

they were, accordingly, speedily arrested and sent to 
Virginia to be tried for treason as the agents of the 
arch-conspirator. 

Governor Claiborne issued a proclamation de- 
nouncing Burr's project and warning the people of 
the penalty affixed to treason by the laws of the 
United States. Before Dr. Bollman was sent north 
to Richmond and while he was in the custody of 
General Wilkinson, an effort was made to have him 
released by a civil court on a writ of habeas corpus. 
This proved successful, the judge deciding, properly 
perhaps, that the prisoner not having been regularly 
charged and indicted was illegally held. Arrests 
continued, however, and martial law prevailed. 
Those who were made prisoners were at once 
hurried beyond the jurisdiction of the courts of 
Louisiana. 

Governor Claiborne had organized the militia of 
New Orleans into a battalion and this he kept in 
constant readiness for action. Gunboats lay in the 
river before the city and General Wilkinson's troops 
were disposed to the best advantage, giving the 
appearance of a siege rather than a defence of the 
place. A force of patrols scoured the city and 
country day and night. 

The virus of Bun's treason had orone into the 
blood of a strong minority who spared no pains to 
ring the changes on the phrases : " Freedom of the 



THE TERRITORY OF ORLEANS. 189 

people," " Military usurpation" and " Denial of ha- 
beas corpus " ; but Claiborne and Wilkinson were 
firm and able men supported by the Government 
of the United States. They well knew that to 
shrink or waver was to open the flood-gates to a 
wild mob of invaders. Moreover the main body 
of the people, and especially the best people, were 
in full accord with the governor and with General 
Wilkinson. 

After all, however. Burr's long-dreaded expedi- 
tion ended in a way which made the whole affair 
appear scarcely worth note. This mighty insur- 
gent, this self-appointed deliverer of Mexico and 
-Sovereign of the Southwest" was, toward the 
end of January, 1S07, found drifting down to the 
Bayou Pierre at the head of his " Army of Inva- 
sion ! " This much-heralded force was then dis- 
covered to consist of but a few little boats and a 
band of about a hundred men ! The fallen states- 
man and his misguided followers were captured 
forthwith, and so ended the notorious scheme for 
erecting a new government in the far Southwest. 
This season of turmoil and confusion gave rise 
to a great deal of local trouble in Louisiana, and 
especially in New Orleans; personal encounters, 
family feuds and all the results attendant upon 
fierce political struggles in a population peculiarly 
excitable, were of common occurrence. Immigra- 



I90 THE TERRITORY OF ORLEANS. 

tion was greatly retarded, because every stranger 
was viewed with suspicion and arrested, upon the 
slightest legal pretext, as an emissary sent by Burr 
or some of his coadjutors. The arrest of Burr him- 
self, however, was the signal for a strong reaction 
which put an end to all the treasonable scheming 
in the West. 

About this time it began to appear almost cer- 
tain that there would soon be war between the 
United States and Great Britain. Late in the 
summer of 1808 General Wilkinson was put in 
command of a strong force (amounting to nearly 
two thousand men from the regular army) which 
had been sent to Terre aux Boeufs, a marshy and 
malarious district on the Gulf Coast of Louis- 
iana. It is difficult to imagine any good reason for 
selecting such a position for a camp at any time, 
but particularly in the summer. Disaster was sure 
to follow. A pestilence of a scorbutic nature soon 
developed which destroyed more than a third of the 
army. The suffering remnant was taken into a 
fleet of small boats and after a burning voyage of 
forty-seven days during which the plague of disease 
was accompanied by a plague of insects, it reached 
Fort Adams. This dreadful disaster led to the 
suspension of General Wilkinson, who was su- 
perceded by General Wade Hampton on the 
nineteenth of December, 1809. Wilkinson was 



THE TERRITORY OE ORLEANS. 19I 

reinstated, however, and returned to his command 
a Httle later, the charges against him having been 

refuted. 

While these things were passing, the citizens of 
the Baton Rouge territory were forming plans for 
freeino- themselves from the oppression of the over- 
bearing Spanish officers who pretended to govern 
them. They had petitioned the United States, ask- 
ino- the privilege of coming under the protection of 
the American Union, but had failed to receive any 
positive assurances. Nevertheless their determina- 
tion was not shaken. 

Thev awaited an opportunity which at last came. 
In the summer of 18 10 the Spanish garrison at 
Baton Rouge was weakened until there remained 
in the fort but about one hundred and fifty men. 
Ascertaining this, two daring and courageous men, 
Captain George Depassau and Captain Thomas, 
called together one hundred and twenty riflemen 
and boldly dashed into the town. A slight skir- 
mish followed in which Governor Grandpre was 
shot, and the garrison, seeing no chance for suc- 
cessful resistance, soon capitulated. In a little 
while the news of the victory spread over the terri- 
tory. The people were called together at Baton 
Rouge and a provisional government established. 
An act declaring the independence of the territory 
was passed by a convention on the twenty-ninth 



192 THE TERRITORY OE ORLEANS. 

day of September, 1810. In this act the terri- 
tory was called " The Territory of West Florida " 
and was set up as a " free and independent State." 
It was signed by John Rhea, president, and Andrew 
Steele, secretary. Congress directed the President 
of the United States to take possession of the prov- 
ince forthwith, which he did by ordering Governor 
Claiborne to assume control of it as a part of his 
territory. 

On the seventh of December Claiborne raised the 
flag of the Union at Francisville. A little later he 
issued a proclamation annexing the district to the 
Territory of Orleans and dividing it into six 
parishes : East Baton Rouge, Feliciana, St. Helena, 
St. Tammany, Pascagoula and Biloxi. The Span- 
iards, however, continued to hold possession of 
Mobile, Fort Charlotte and the district immediately 
surrounding them. 

With the beginning of the year 181 1 came an- 
other insurrection of the negro slaves in the parish 
of St. John the Baptist, thirty-six miles above New 
Orleans. It was as barbaric as it was picturesque 
and horrible. About five hundred of these half- 
savage people formed themselves into a column 
and, with flags flying, marched to the time of wild 
music made by blowing into reed " quills " and by 
beating upon iron kettles and other sonorous imple- 
ments. They moved directly toward New Orleans, 







^-^j' 























THE TERRITORY OF ORLEANS. 195 

destroying the plantations in tlieir way and forcing 
the slaves to join them. The ringleaders of the 
mob were acting under a frenzy of excitement 
which they succeeded in communicating to their 
followers. With wild yells, barbaric songs and the 
din of rude musical instruments they struck terror 
to the hearts of the white settlers, scattered but 
thinly along the route of rebellion. 

As soon as information reached Baton Rouge 
and Fort St. Charles the garrisons marched in all 
haste to the scene and fell upon the dusky insur- 
gents without mercy. Many of the negroes were 
killed outright, some were hanged as soon as cap- 
tured and sixteen of the most prominent agitators 
were taken down to New Orleans. There they 
were tried, condemned and executed. Their heads 
were afterwards placed upon poles and set up at 
conspicuous points along the river as a terrible 
warning to the survivors and their friends. It 
must have been a ghastly sight. As late as Decem- 
ber, 1885, the old negroes of Mississippi and Lou- 
isiana described to their grandchildren in solemn 
whispers the terrible retribution of the whites just 
as their sires had depicted it to them. 

On the eleventh of February, 181 1, the American 
Cono-ress authorized the calling of a convention in 
the Territory of Orleans for the purpose of framing 
a constitution preliminary to its admission into the 



19^ THE TERRITORY OF ORLEANS. 

Union as a sovereign State. Louisiana became a 
State on the eighth of April, 1812, Her constitu- 
tion was far less republican than were those of the 
other Commonwealths. No clergyman or priest 
was permitted to be a legislator or a governor, and 
the institution of slavery was guarded and pro- 
tected by the strongest and most unequivocal terms. 

So far the parishes of the district between the 
Mississippi and the Pearl River had been left out 
of the State, but on the fourteenth of April, 1S12, 
an act of Congress was approved enlarging the 
State of Louisiana so as to include those parishes. 
This act gave to Louisiana the limits which form 
its present boundary. These are : on the south, 
following the line of the Gulf of Mexico from the 
mouth of Pearl River westward to the mouth of 
Sabine River, thence northward in the middle 
of the stream to the thirty-second parallel, thence 
due north to the thirty-third parallel, which forms 
the northern line, and east to the Mississippi River. 
From parallel thirty-three the boundary follows the 
meanderings of the Mississippi southward to par- 
allel thirty-one, which forms the line eastward to 
Pearl River whose current in turn bounds the east 
to the Gulf. All the islands along the Gulf coast 
are included. 

New Orleans was rapidly becoming a city of 
importance ; vessels from almost every maritime 



THE TERRITORY OF ORLEANS. 197 

country lay at her gates, taking or discharging car- 
croes, and it was thought by some who were counted 
as the most far-seeing men of the time that she was 
destined soon to be the metropoHs of America. 
Her popuhation, however, continued to receive ele- 
ments of a most undesirable kind. The buccaneer 
spirit still hovered over the Gulf. Pirates and 
smuo-o-lers lurked among the lakes, inlets, bayous 
and islands south of New Orleans, and preyed upon 
commerce in every unlawful way. The notorious 
Captain Lafitte had drawn together a considera- 
ble body of these desperadoes and had established 
them on a wild, almost inaccessible island in Lake 
Barrataria, whence they issued at pleasure to 
carry on their piratical and smuggling depreda- 
tions. Lafitte had many friends in New Orleans 
and it appears that he was not without accom- 
plices among the most influential business men 
of the city. 

In those days, and especially in Louisiana, 
it was thought scarcely immoral to avoid the 
revenue laws or to do violence to Spanish com- 
merce and shipping. Lafitte was quite successful 
in his illicit business and his name became as fa- 
mous as that of Captain Kidd. Many wonderful 
stories of which he was the hero were told and his 
piratical forays were dreaded by every merchant- 
man who sailed the sunny Gulf. 



198 THE TERRITORY OF ORLEANS. 

Jean Lafitte was a blacksmith who came to New 
Orleans from Bordeaux, in France, and set up his 
forge at the corner of Bourbon and St. Philip 
streets. It is not known how he came to make 
the acquaintance of the Barratarian outlaws in the 
first place, but the probability is that he began by 
acting as a middle man between them and the 
traders of New Orleans. He was a man of g:reat 
energy and fine address and soon worked his way 
up until he had become the supreme commander 
of the whole outlaw fleet — a sort of buccaneer 
commodore or admiral whose word was law with 
the lawless. 

His adventures would fill a volume ; but his 
chief contribution to the story of Louisiana was 
the service he rendered the people of New Orleans 
by informing Governor Claiborne of the approach 
of the British and of their plan of attack. The 
British, indeed, sent a man-of-war to Barrataria and 
offered Lafitte a large sum of money to induce him 
to aid them in taking the city. The pirate chief 
rid himself of his tempters by at once accepting the 
proposition of the invaders, but he as promptly 
betrayed them by conveying to Governor Claiborne 
a full account of their proposed expedition. This 
was the first valuable information received from 
any quarter touching the movements of the British 
in the Gulf, and but for the timely warning it gave 



THE TERRITORY OF ORLEANS. 1 99 

to Louisiana and to the Government of the United 
States New Orleans must have fallen. 

The population of Louisiana increased very 
rapidly from 18 10 to the close of the year 181 3. 
At that date it had reached nearly ninety thousand. 
A majority of the permanent white residents were 
French, though north of the Red River and east 
of the Wichita the settlements were formed largely 
of Americans from the Ohio and Tennessee valleys 
and from the Missouri and Illinois regions. 

The war between the United States and Great 
Britain did not seriously threaten or affect Louis- 
iana until near the close of the struggle. Nor had 
any preparations been made against attack. The 
river and the lakes with all their network of creeks 
and bayous were scarcely fortified enough to turn 
back barges of musketeers. New Orleans sat 
there behind her levee without any efficient fort 
between her and the sea. General Wilkinson, 
who, as we have seen, had been sent back to his 
command, urged the war department to furnish 
him the means with which to erect fortifications 
on the river at English Turn, Fort St. Philip and 
the Balize. Nothing to this end was done, and 
if ever utter disregard for the safety of a State 
can be justified by a providential turn of events, 
this great blunder was certainly most amply justi- 
fied ; for Andrew Jackson and his little army 



200 THE TERRITORY OF ORLEANS. 

proved to be all the fortification necessary to 
defend New Orleans and the Mississippi Valley 
ao-ainst the very flower of the British veterans 
fresh from the victorious campaigns of Wellington. 

General Wilkinson was again removed from 
command, General Flournoy superseding him in 
June, 1813. Much dissatisfaction was the result 
and General Flournoy was severely criticized for 
inaction and inefficiency; but it is difficult to dis- 
cover how he could have bettered his opportuni- 
ties seeing that nothing was furnished him with 
which to act. Louisiana was infested with men 
who but lately had been concocting traitorous 
schemes of insurrection and who were ever ready 
to denounce any person invested with Federal 
authority who would not fall in with their plans 
for making large sums of money by illicit means. 

General Wilkinson had been an able officer, but 
his evident love of financial intrigue made him, 
where British gold might reach him, a very unsafe 
person to trust. So at least it would appear, 
viewed from this distance, and with all the facts 
before us. General Flournoy was not the man 
for a time and a place demanding independent 
action and great executive ability. He waited for 
orders, and did nothing, because he was not ordered 
to do anything in particular. The massacre at 
Fort Mims was an intensely horrible one, but 



THE TERRITORY OF ORLEANS. 20i 

General Flournoy had been misled by the repre- 
sentations of men whom he trusted and he was, 
moreover, in constant fear of transcending his 
authority. 

Fort Mims was a stockade in Mississippi Terri- 
tory and was occupied by about two hundred and 
seventy persons, many of whom were women and 
children. On the thirtieth of August, 1813, the 
Creek Indians attacked the place and after a long 
and desperate fight killed all but seventeen of its 
inmates. This horrible disaster served to stir up 
the sluggish authorities at Washington. 

Governor Claiborne had done everything in his 
power to avert the disaster, but his forces were 
weak and scattered, while the Indians were able to 
concentrate at any point without dii^ficulty. Con- 
sternation spread down to the Gulf coast and for a 
time it looked as if the savages would have noth- 
ing" to bar their w^ay. Claiborne, however, was 
always efficient and as true as steel. He pushed 
forward the organization of an army to co-operate 
with troops from Georgia and a little later General 
Andrew Jackson marched from Huntsville with 
the force of Tennesseeans under his command, 
fought the battle of Talladega and totally routed 
the army of the Creeks, killing three hundred 
warriors. 

A British fleet had, for weeks, been hovering 



202 THE TERRITORY OF ORLEANS. 

along the Gulf coast. Landing at Spanish ports, 
it had furnished the hostile savages with arms and 
ammunition. But in the battle of Tohopeka, 
fought on the twenty-seventh of March, 1814, 
General Jackson again defeated the Indians and, 
as he said in his report, forever broke their power. 
At the close of the Creek war General Jackson 
was sent to supersede General Flournoy in com- 
mand of the seventh military district. This in- 
cluded Louisiana. His first step was to send a 
o-arrison to occupy Fort Bowyer on Mobile Point 
which commanded the entrance to the Bay of 
Mobile. He strengthened the works and erected 
batteries consisting of twenty guns. The fort was 
attacked on September the fifteenth by a com- 
bined land and naval force. The British fleet 
was commanded by Sir W. H. Percy; the land 
forces, most of them Indians, were led by Colonel 
Nichols and Captain Woodbine. The attack was 
repulsed ; the British fleet suffered the loss of a war 
vessel and the Indians left on the field over a 
hundred warriors dead. 

It was now ascertained beyond a certainty that 
New Orleans would be attacked as soon as the 
British could concentrate a sufficient force for the 
purpose. General Jackson, after taking Pensacola 
early in September, forced the enemy to blow up 
Fort Barancas and hastened to New Orleans to 



THE TEKKITORY OE ORLEANS. 203 

put tlic defences of tlic Mississippi in condition 
for resisting the powerful British fleet which was 
ah-eady in the Gulf. He found the militia dis- 
banded and scattered, the forts worthless and a 
large part of the people utterly indifferent to the 
danger that threatened New Orleans. Governor 
Claiborne called a session of the legislature and 
did everything in his power to assist in raising the 
means of defence ; but the same malcontents and 
trouble-mongers whose counsels and schemings 
had done so much harm to Louisiana, were again 
at work. The Legislature fell to wrangling and 
was slow to act in co-operation with General 
Jackson in this pressing crisis. The man of iron 
was not to be put aside, however, so long as there 
was any emergency to meet. He took everything 
into his own hands, his grim enthusiasm and tire- 
less energy attracting to him all the patriotic spirits 
of the State. 

The defence of New Orleans presented diffi- 
culties that seemed almost insurmountable with 
the scant means at Jackson's disposal. The lakes 
and bayous, the many mouths of the river and the 
almost innumerable creeks and passes demanded 
instant attention. But, with a rapidity and direct- 
ness which seem next to incredible, the unflagging 
Tennesseean personally superintended the placing 
of obstructions across many of the smaller chan- 



204 ^-^^ TERRITORY OF ORLEANS. 

nels, while at the same time he was re-organizing 
and strengthening the State mihtia, ordering the 
movement of troops from points on the river above 
New Orleans, and sending a fleet of gunboats into 
the lakes and bays to the eastward. 

The British fleet of sixty war vessels and many 
transports appeared at the mouth of the Mississippi 
about December ninth. Three days later it came 
to anchor in Mississippi Sound near Cat Island, 
whence the commander sent out boats to survey 
the waters in the direction of Lake Ponchartrain. 

Lieutenant Jones was at once ordered to move 
the American flotilla of five gun-boats into the Bay 
of St. Louis for the purpose of observing the 
enemy's movements. It was evident that the Brit- 
ish were preparing to enter Lake Borgne and pass 
thence into Ponchartrain. The American flotilla 
was far too weak to be opposed to the force 
brought by the British ; it should never, indeed, 
have been exposed to attack. Lieutenant Jones, 
however, obeying the orders of Commodore Patter- 
son, remained in the vicinity of the fleet until his 
flotilla was surrounded by the enemy's barges and 
captured. This gave the British as they thought 
an open way through Chef Menteur Pass, but Gen- 
eral Jackson had neglected nothing. A battery had 
already been erected on a point commanding the 
pass, while a battalion of colored troops and a 



THE TERRITORY OF ORLEANS. 205 

company of dragoons were stationed on the Gen- 
tilly road within supporting distance. The fort 
on the Rigolcts was also well manned, and Captain 
Newman who was in command had orders to hold 

it at all hazards. 

A situation more bewildering than that in which 
General Jackson now found himself would be hard 
to imagine. General Coffee had been ordered to 
New Orleans with the forces at Baton Rouge and 
demands for troops had been sent to Mississippi, 
Kentucky and Tennessee ; but high waters, floods 
of rain and a lack of adequate means of trans- 
portation had prevented their arrival. Happily 
the enemy moved slowly, blindly feeling the way 
through Louisiana swamps and marshes, bayous 
and ptsses toward the city of New Orleans which 
they had foredoomed to rapine, pillage and fire. 

Bayou Bienvenu was a narrow and obscure chan- 
nel leading westward from Lake Borgne nearly to 
the Mississippi River. General Villere, whose 
plantation was on the head waters of this bayou, 
had been sent with a few men to plant obstructions 
in its bed and to do picket duty. The British 
came upon the detachment before the work had 
been done and taking the men unaware overpow- 
ered and captured them. This was on the twenty- 
second of December, 1S14, just at nightfall. 
Early on the following morning General Keane 



206 THE TERRITORY OF ORLEANS. 

had landed an army of three thousand men. Dur- 
ing the day a part of this force was dispatched to 
the left bank of the river. 

News of the enemy's movements quickly reached 
General Jackson and he promptly began prepara- 
tions for marching to the attack, knowing that 
delay would be disastrous. His plan was to sur- 
prise Keane by a night assault. 

General Coffee, who had reached New Orleans 
by a forced march, was placed on the extreme left, 
Colonel Ross with Plauche and Dacquin's com- 
panies occupied the centre. On the right were 
placed the United States troops consisting of the 
seventh and the forty-fourth regiments, while the 
marines and artillery under Colonel McRae fol- 
lowed the road toward Villere's plantation. Two 
vessels, the Caroline and the Louisiana, were ordered 
to drop down the river, keeping on the line. 

The British forces full three thousand stromr 
had chosen a good position with their right cov- 
ered by a swampy jungle and their left resting on 
the river bank. They were not expecting attack 
and had taken no adequate precautions against a 
surprise. 

General Jackson's land force amounted to about 
two thousand men, a great many of whom were 
quite inexperienced as soldiers. To Coffee's com- 
mand was given the task of turning the enemy's 



THE TERRITORY OF ORLEANS. 20*/ 

right and assailing his rear. General Jackson led 
the forces in front, while the Caroline commanded 
by Captain Henley was to rake the British line 
from the river. 

General Coffee's men dismounted and had reached 
a position near the enemy's right when the schooner 
let go a bellowing broadside. This was just after 
nightfall while the over-confident British were clus- 
tered about their camp-fires cooking and eating 
their evening meal. The river was level with its 
banks and the grape and canister from the Caro- 
line's guns swept the ground surface like a storm. 
Instantly Coffee's men charged to close quarters 
and poured in a destructive fire. Jackson rushed 
forward with equal ardor, his troops firing volley 
after volley before the astounded British could 
rally from the confusion into which they had 
fallen. Between three hundred and four hundred 
were killed in the camp by the deadly, concen- 
trated fire which raked it from three directions. 
The British soon regained their dogged coolness, 
however, and formed their line in the darkness, 
first having put out their fires. Reinforcements 
were already on the way and they slowly fell back 
toward the lake ; but the Americans pressed hard 
upon them keeping up the fight vigorously for an 
hour, driving them nearly a mile from their camp. 

General Jackson then withdrew and next morn- 



2o8 THE TERRITORY OF ORLEANS. 

ing took position about two miles farther up the 
river along the line of a considerable sluice-ditch; 
his left rested on a swamp and his right touched 
the broad river. 

The fight had been a deadly one, considering its 
short duration and the number of troops engaged. 
The American loss was twenty-four killed and one 
hundred and fifteen wounded, besides seventy- 
four prisoners. The British loss was about four 
hundred. Colonel ■ Lauderdale of Tennessee, a 
brave and chivalrous man, was one of the Ameri- 
can officers killed, and among the prisoners were 
some of the leading citizens of New Orleans. The 
blood of the people was now on fire and every 
thought was of fight. General Jackson, notwith- 
standing some powerful enemies, had won popular 
confidence by his determined and successful de- 
fence and the best men of Louisiana were hasten- 
ing to join him. Reinforcements from up the 
river were slow in coming, but they came as fast 
as they could. Every resource was strained to 
prepare for the onslaught which Jackson felt must 
soon be made by the whole force of the enemy. 
To lose New Orleans vv'ould be an irremediable dis- 
aster; to save it, in view of all the circumstances, 
would be an achievement of the most heroic kind. 
Andrew Jackson was the man for the emergency. 
No other leader could have commanded just then 



THE TERRITORY OF ORLEANS. 209 

the influence that would hold together such an army 
as was his, in front of a disciplined, experienced 
and, in point of numbers, overwhelmingly superior 
enemv. He could draw to him all classes of men 
and could inspire them with that superb courage 
which was his own passport to success. He was 
a fighter at every point of his nature ; he put fight 
into his men; he could make them feel that there 
was nothing so manly as desperate, dogged cour- 
age, nothing so despicable as cowardice. 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE BATTLE OE NEW ORLEANS. 




]EW ORLEANS was 
now a city of about 
twenty thousand in- 
habitants. Within its 
great warehouses were 
stored one hundred 
and fifty thousand 
bales of cotton, ten 
thousand hogsheads of 
sugar and a large 
amount of rice and molasses. The wharves and 
river were crowded with idle ships which since 
the breaking out of the war had been unable to 
sail away to their places of destination. 

The language of the city was French ; the bulk of 
its population was Creole — for by this name the 
American-born French citizens called themselves. 
The Creoles have been much written about as a race 
strangely conservative, exclusive and peculiar. The 
careful student of American life will modify a great 
deal of what has heretofore been currently received 



THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS. 21 1 

as truth in this regard. The large fact is that any 
isoLated population appears peculiar when compared 
with people who have lived in the full glare of the 
world's brightest life. New Orleans was isolated, 
and, even from its foundation, had been subjected 
to a multitude of singularly lawless and conflicting 
influences. Since 1803 it had been the objective 
point of almost every fugitive from justice in the 
United States. Some of its most energetic and 
wealthiest men were persons whose names graced 
the criminal dockets in distant jurisdictions. These 
were the men who had most strenuously favored 
Burr's schemes; they were now opposed to Jack- 
son's military movements. Governor Claiborne had 
bitter enemies among them. In the legislature they 
had stirred up so bad a feeling that it appeared 
impossible to induce that body to act in a prompt 
and patriotic manner. But these were not Creoles. 
It has been so often affirmed and reaffirmed that 
the Louisiana French were not loyal to the United 
States in the war of 18 12, and so little has ever been 
said to contradict it, that it has come to be a part 
of every so-called historical picture of Creole life ; 
but it is not the w^hole truth. Governor Claiborne, 
althouo-h a o-ood and true man, was much inclined 
to have his own way at all hazards. For a long 
time he and Wilkinson had been joint autocrats of 
Louisiana, giving little heed to the tastes and pref- 



212 THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS. 

erences of the Creoles, political, social or relio-ious. 
Most of the lucrative and honorable offices of the 
State had been worked into the hands of Protestant 
English-speaking Americans. The disloyalty, if it 
existed, was, therefore, local and directed ao-ainst 
the State government rather than against that of 
the United States. 

Unquestionably, however, Jackson had a power- 
ful alien army in front of him while behind him in 
the city of New Orleans was a dissatisfied, restless 
and divided people watching him, if not maliciously, 
at least suspiciously. But it cannot be said truth- 
fully that the Creoles were unpatriotic. The blood 
spilt in that glorious struggle below the excited city 
was not all Anglo-American blood ; the best veins of 
the old French families were freely opened, whilst 
the quadroon smuggler and the descendants of buc- 
caneer and corsair fought to desperation and fell at 
the front of every charge upon the invaders. 

General Jackson was a bluff, gruff, domineerino- 
man, when affairs did not go to suit him, and from 
the moment of his arrival at New Orleans, flushed 
with the brilliant victory that he had gained over 
the British on the Gulf, he had treated the civil 
authorities of Louisiana as though they had been 
mere dust that his breath could blow away. He 
was a fighter who fought to kill and who would 
brook no interference with his methods, no in- 



THE BATTLR OF NEW ORLEANS. 213 

quiries into his plans, no suggestions as to the 
extent of his authority. It chanced that he was 
the ricrht man for the emergency ; no other man 
could have saved New Orleans.* 

After the battle of December 23 the Americans 
worked like moles and beavers to finish their line 
of breastworks before the British could attack 
them. The Rodriguez canal, chosen by Jackson 
as the line of his defences, was an old mill-race 
flowing between the river and the swamp, a mere 
sluiceway, full of aquatic grass and miry with 
black mud. On the side of this ditch nearest 
the city he ordered the work begun and the men 
obeyed with such a will that the oozy earth was 
heaped up as if by magic. It was like jelly, how- 
ever, and would not stand in due form. Some one 
suggested that a ship heavily ladened with cotton 
was anchored in the river near by. Why not go 
fetch the bales and use them for breastworks ? No 
sooner said than done. That cotton-bale breast- 
work has become picturesquely historic, but, the 

♦ " No man could have been better fitted for the task. He had hereditary wrongs to 
avenge on the Briliili and he haled them with an implacable fury that was absolutely devoid 
of fear Born and brought up among the lawless characters of the frontier he was able to 
establish martial law in the city without in the least quelling the spirit of the citizens. To a 
restless and untiring energy he united sleepless vigilance and genuine military genius. 
Pr.>mpt to attack whenever the chance offered itself, seizing with ready grasp the slightest 
vantage ground, and never giving up a foot of earth that he could keep, he yet had the 
patience to plav a defensive game where it so suited him and with consummate skill he always 
followed out the scheme of warfare that was best adapted to his wild soldiery. In after years 
he did to his country some good and nwre evil , but no true American can thir.k of his deeds 
at New Orleans without profound and unmixed thankfulness." -Theodore Roosevelt's 



214 THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS. 

truth is, it was worse than none. This the British 
cannon-balls soon demonstrated, and Jackson rid 
himself of it in short order. The cunnino- foe, not 
to be outdone by American ingenuity, opposed 
his walls of mud and of sugar-hogsheads to the 
cotton fort ; but they too were useless, the balls 
bounding through them with scarcely a diminution 
of force. 

The Caroline, that plucky and persistent little 
schooner (" manned by regular seamen, largely New 
Englanders," says Mr. Roosevelt), crept down the 
river, on the morning of the twenty-fourth. She 
anchored near to the shore on the side opposite 
the camp of the British where General Keane was 
commanding, and, as soon as her gunner could see, 
opened fire with such effect that the whole field 
was swept. The British could not move and they 
had no batteries with which to respond. Durino- 
the entire day they lay behind the levee, in swales 
and ditches, under cover of cabins, and waited for 
night to come. Meantime the Louisiana dropped 
down the river to within a mile of the Caroline. 
General Jackson was never at rest. He saw every 
part of his works, encouraged his men, gave orders 
incessantly, took personal control and direction of 
everything. 

Was New Orleans disloyal .? Were the Creoles 
traitors to the stars and stripes .? Let the names 



THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS. 215 

of Villere and Plauche, of Latour, Dacquin, and 
Lacaste, and of the Battalion D'Orleans, — those 
brave volunteers who worked with bare and bleed- 
ing hands, without food, without rest, night and 
clay, — let all these answer such questions. And let 
too the memory of those courageous French women 
who made hospital nurses of themselves bear wit- 
ness to their loyalty. New England was patriotic to 
its inmost heart-core and yet the newspapers of 
New England iterated and reiterated the declara- 
tion : " No more taxes from New England till the 
administration makes peace." Partisan politics 
had burned hotly and the thousand things said 
to the discredit of the Creoles of Louisiana were 
but embers blown from the political fireplace and 
kept aglow for electioneering purposes. If New 
Orleans and the Creoles had been unpatriotic Gen- 
eral Jackson would have been at their mercy. 

Claiborne sent a proposition to the Barratarian 
pirates offering them full pardon for all past 
offences if they would come to the aid of Louis- 
iana. This was accepted and no braver men 
fought in the subsequent battle. 

On Christmas day Sir Edward Packenham 
arrived at the British camp and took command. 
Major-General Samuel Gibbs was his second in 
command, and at once the somewhat disheartened 
army was flushed with new hope and courage. 



2l6 THE BATTLE OE NEW ORLEANS. 

General Packenham was a brother-in-law of the 
Duke of Wellington and an officer of great renown. 
He had fought his way to the highest place in the 
confidence of his government and of the army. 
Barely thirty-eight, brilliant, the bravest of the 
brave, fresh from the desperate battles of the 
peninsula, "trained for seven years in the stern 
school of the Iron Duke " he certainly seemed the 
man to lead this army to assured victory. 

As soon as he arrived he began an examination 
of the ground between his own and Jackson's posi- 
tion. His first thought, almost, was directed upon 
the brave little schooner Caroline. During the 
night of the twenty-sixth he put a battery in posi- 
tion on the levee and erected near it a furnace for 
heating shot. At daylight this battery opened on 
the Caroline with terrible effect, sending its white- 
hot missiles with admirable marksmanship, right into 
her hull. Captain Henly was soon forced to aban- 
don her, and scarcely had he got his men ashore 
when she blew up with a terrific roar. The British 
cheered madly at the destruction of this main 
obstacle to their advance. Then they turned their 
hissing hot-shot upon the Louisiana. There was 
no wind and Lieutenant Thompson set his sails in 
•vain. A shell burst on deck wounding six men. 
The white-hot round-shot were falling in the water 
close alongside the beleagured vessel. The boats 



THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS. 217 

were manned in sheer desperation; ready hands 
pulled at the oars and the Louisiana was actually 
towed away out of danger by the plucky and faith- 
ful crew. And now the Americans yelled as only 
Americans can. 

On the twenty-eighth General Packenham made 
a reconnoissance in force after having formed his 
line with greatest care. 

It was a fine sub-tropical winter morning, clear 
and cool, and the Americans on the works behind 
the sluice-way could plainly see the splendid col- 
umns of the British as they swept out from the 
cover of some plantation quarters five hundred 
yards distant. They came, as if on dress parade, 
in close order with colors flying and to the sound 
of martial music. A rush of congreve rockets 
filled the air in front of them and their advancing 
batteries soon enveloped them in smoke. 

The Louisiana was in position, her eight-gun 
broadsides raking the levee and dashing up the 
black mud and watery sand beyond. Her guns 
were served with remarkable accuracy and rapidity, 
the earth-jarring explosions following one another 
like the reverberations of a terrible thunder-storm. 

General Jackson, pale and haggard from disease 
and loss of sleep, his stern features moveless as 
marble, stood on a slight rise of the land behind 
his works. Throuo-h an old field-glass he watched 



2l8 THE BATTLE OE NEW ORLEANS. 

the steadily advancing columns. He received 
reports and gave orders, in a voice as steady and 
calm as if he had been at dinner; he saw the effect 
of his battery and his ship's broadsides; but he 
saw also that the magnificently equipped British 
troops came right on. Was it to be a battle ? 
Would they attempt to storm his works 1 Let 
them. He was ready. They came half-way to the 
breastworks behind which lay his fighting-men ; 
still nearer they came. There they halted. The 
guns of the Louisiana had smashed and silenced 
their battery on the levee and with a loss of fifty 
killed and wounded they retired past the burning 
houses fired by hot shot from the American guns. 

General Packenham may have been content with 
the information obtained by means of this move- 
ment. He had found out just where his adversary 
lay and in what a lair. He would now proceed to 
run him out and dispatch him. 

General Jackson, the ever alert and ever ready, 
had learned something also by the day's opera- 
tions. His left was weak and could have been 
turned easily by the British right. Indeed it had 
been turned by General Gibbs and the result might 
have been disastrous had that officer pressed his 
advantage. 

General Packenham and his staff were impressed 
with the belief that the American force was a very 



THE BATTLE OE NEW ORLEANS. 219 

laro-e and effective one. A council was held and 
it was determined that the works of General Jack- 
son should be advanced upon by a system of 
gradual approaches and finally carried by storm. 
It was the Englishman's great mistake. Such a 
plan in such a country appears at this distance 
to possess neither merit nor force. 

General Jackson at once set his men at work 
streno-theninu: the defences on the left by building 
heavy mud embankments out into the swamp and 
planting some guns there to prevent another flank- 
ino- movement. Indeed every moment of delay on 
the part of the British commander was used by 
the American general in making ready for the next 
attack. Reinforcements reached him — swelling 
his army to about six thousand regulars and militia 
all told, while the enemy now numbered nearly fif- 
teen thousand, most of them the " fierce and hardy 
veterans of the Peninsular War." 

New Orleans was roused to the highest pitch of 
excitement. Everybody was fired with the fighting 
enthusiasm. Old men, young men, strong and 
weak, all clutched such arms as could be had and 
hurried to the front. It was a motley line that 
lay behind those rude earthworks on the eighth of 
January, 18 15, and such weapons of war as the 
men had would make a soldier of to-day laugh 
to see. Old fire-lock fowling-pieces, bell-muzzled 



2 20 THE BATTLE OE NEW ORLEANS. 

blunderbusses, long backwoods rifles, rusty mus- 
kets, old horse-pistols — anything that could be 
made to fire either ball or shot was clutched by a 
resolute hand and held ready to be aimed by a 
steady eye. Jackson's grand spirit was in every 
breast; his enthusiastic patriotism had become 
infectious. There was little rest for any hand, 
little sleep for any eye. 

As the eighth day approached it became cjuite 
evident that Packenham was making ready for a 
grand assault with a force apparently overwhelm- 
ing. General Jackson had caused the levee to be 
cut both above and below the British lines, but the 
river was not high enough to do the work intended 
and the water really helped General Packenham in 
forwarding his reinforcements and supplies. The 
Louisiana took good care to manoeuvre in such a 
way that she kept herself well out of her enemy's 
reach, and at the same time she kept up an almost 
incessant firino-. The Americans with their land 
batteries kept feeling for the British line and finally, 
by elevating the guns were abl-e to drop both shot 
and shell in the midst of their camp. Heavy guns 
were planted on the right bank of the river so as 
to command the area to be crossed by Packenham's 
forces in assaulting Jackson's line. On the left the 
American works were projected far into the swamp, 
and a reconnoitering party of the British were 




Jackson's sharp-shooters. 



THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS. 223 

repulsed while trying to feel their way around the 
extreme wing. Daring sharp-shooters, most of 
tliem Tennesseeans who were armed with long 
deer-rifles, crept forward and annoyed the enemy's 
pickets by killing a man here and there from the 
cover of the thick bushes or tall grass. 

On the night of the thirty-first of December, 
General Packenham sent forward a strong detach- 
ment which erected six batteries of thirty cannon, 
twenty long eighteen-pounders and ten twenty-four 
pounders, only three hundred yards distant from 
the American line. This movement was skillfully 
performed and on the following morning an almost 
disastrous surprise resulted. 

New Year's Day dawned gloomily with a dense 
o-ray fog lying close to the ground. All was still 
and silent. The Louisiana lay some distance up 
the river and a part of her men were planting 
another heavy gun in the battery on the west bank 
of the river. 

General Jackson ordered a grand parade of his 
men between the lines and his headquarters, and 
while this was going on the fog lifted slowly and 
the sun began to shine. It was a soldierly way of 
welcoming in the new year, but it was not a very 
wise move in the presence of a wary and over- 
w^helmingly strong enemy. Jackson was in his 
room getting himself ready to review the troops, 



2 24 THE BATTLE OE NEW ORLEANS. 

when suddenly those thirty heavy cannon boomed 
out their awful thunder and their iron storm rushed 
crashing by. \\\ the same moment a shriekino- 
shower of congreve rockets filled the air. Cannon- 
balls began to strike the house in which were the 
General and some other officers. Colonel Butler 
was knocked down and covered with a mass of 
falling rubbish. A hundred shot struck the house 
in the space of a few minutes. 

All was wild confusion for a time ; but the men 
rushed to the breastworks. The guns were speed- 
ily manned, and when Jackson reached the line he 
found everything in order. The Louisiana quickly 
dropped down to her place and began to pound 
away, while the heavy guns on the west side of the 
river opened with tremendous vigor. It was a 
noise worth hearing. Over fifty cannon were bel- 
lowing at once. Humphrey's artillery was doing 
glorious work, knocking the enemy's sugar-hogshead 
works all into heaps, tumbling their guns over and 
scattering their gunners and support. The pirates 
Dominique and Beluche, handled a battery with all 
the desperate courage of their class, well earning 
their governor's promised pardon by quickly silenc- 
ing the guns in front of them. The enemy made 
an effort to turn Jackson's left, but were promptly 
repulsed in disorder by Coffee. 

Before noon the British batteries were silent and 



THE BATTLE OE AEW ORLEANS. 225 

the lifting fog and smoke disclosed a scene whicli 
drew from the brave Americans wild and prolonged 
cheers. Heaps of demolished embankments and 
frao-ments of broken artillery, flying gunners and 
columns of red-coats making for cover, showed 
how completely the attacking force had been beaten 
back into ignominious hiding down in the watery 
and muddy ditches. From this moment forward 
the moj-a/e of the American troops was excellent. 
Every man felt tliat he was a match for two or 
three of the British. General Jackson was de- 
lio-hted. He went up and down the line waving 
his cap in the air and joining in the lusty shouts of 
his soldiers. 

The artillery did not cease firing, but kept a 
level flood of balls pouring across the field. The 
Louisiana bellowed away and from the other side 
of the river came the jarring thunder of the heavy 
battery. Shells were bursting everywhere. The 
round-shot ploughed through the mud and sand 
or bumped heavily among the trees on the left 
and forced the British to keep themselves well 
hidden while they crept back to their lines. 

Thus ended the first strong effort of Packenham 
to reduce the American works. He was now con- 
vinced that an assault by storm was the only means 
of success, and, although his best officers almost 
rose in mutiny against it, he ordered preparations 



2 26 THE BATTLE OE NEW ORLEANS. 

for the attack. By Sunday morning, the eighth of 
January, 1815, the British columns were formed in 
front of that low, dark, terrible wall beyond the 
ditch, and the British leader was with them, ready to 
show that he was their leader in fact as well as in 
name. He had been at Badajos ; he had dealt the 
decisive blow on " the stricken field of Salamanca " ; 
the scars of many wounds were on his body; he 
was not a man to shrink from any danger.* His 
officers and men were most of them grim veterans 
of many a bloody field. He could trust them. 

General Jackson was well aware of the prepara- 
tions going on in the British camp. Indeed his 
army felt what was coming, and each man nerved 
himself to do or die. The word was passed from 
lip to lip that coolness and a steady aim were of 
the highest importance. Every bullet, every round- 
shot, every shell, every flight of grape and canister 
must find its target. 

Take a glance at the field. Here is the Ameri- 
can line a little way behind the muddy sluice-ditch 
which serves as a moat. The breastworks are of 
earth chiefly and made very thick. In front, be- 
yond the ditch, the ground stretches away as flat, 
almost, as water. On the right is the mighty river 

* " He was not the man to flinch from a motley array of volunteers, militia and raw regu- 
lars, led by a grizzled old bush-fighter, whose name had never been heard of outside of his 
own swamps, and there only as the savnge destroyer of some scarcely more savai^e Indian 
tribes." — Roosevelt. 



THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS. 227 

level with its bank, save that a levee barely over- 
looks it. On the left is a dense swamp jungle, 
dark and grim, hung with long moss and covered 
with creeping air-plants. To take the American 
works, think of what the British must do. In the 
first place they must march across that level field 
which is raked by the Louisiana guns and by the 
heavy enfilading batteries on the other side of the 
river. At the same time the batteries of the works 
have a point-blank line of fire right upon their front. 
This is the beginning. Next comes the murderous 
storm of grape and cannister at short range ; then 
they must feel the withering breath of rifle and mus- 
ket, they must flounder through that muddy ditch, 
they must rush upon the belching muzzles of steady 
cruns, they must climb over the embankment. 
Does it appear possible for men to do all this ? 
We who remember the charge of Pickett at 
Gettysburg smile at such a question. Those who 
saw Claiborne at Franklin will scarcely lift their 
eyes as they answer, Yes. The gallant columns of 
Sherman at Kennesaw or those of Grant at Peters- 
buro- know that brave men can accomplish any- 
thing that they are ordered to do. 

Jackson was fearless and his courage knew no 
bounds, but his wisdom made him feel how doubt- 
ful was the issue. One point of his works carried 
and all would be over. 



2 28 THE BATTLE OE NEW ORLEANS. 

" Can wc withstand an assault ? " he inquired of 
General Adair. ^ 

" Yes, possibly, if we hold a strong reserve with 
which to reinforce any failing or breaking part of 
our line," was the prompt answer. This was the 
whole danger expressed in the fewest words. No 
part of the line was strong enough to resist a con- 
centrated and determined rush, unless a reserve 
could be held back ready to step in promptly at 
the critical moment. 

At a little past one o'clock on the mornino- 
of that dreadful but glorious Sunday, Jackson 
arose, called to his dozing aids and gave orders 
for everything to be put in readiness to receive - 
the British. 

"The enemy will be upon us in a few minutes," 
he said; " I must go and see Coffee." 

General Adair was placed in command of the re- 
serve — a thousand Kentuckians — and ordered to 
hold himself ready to support Carroll and Coffee. 
All along the line everything was ready. 

As morninc^ came on its liorht struo-olec] through 
a film of silver fog that veiled the field, the swamp 
and the river. Just at the break of dawn two rock- 
ets streamed up into the murky air as the signal 
for the British advance. By six o'clock two heavy 
columns were in motion. 

The Americans lay behind their works in breath- 



THE BATTLE OF NEJV ORLEANS. 229 

less expectancy listening to those indescribable but 
well-known sounds that always come from an ad- 
vancing army. Slowly the fog lifted and dimly 
enough a dull red line was seen steadily moving 
out of the distance. A gun from battery six sent 
the first shot hurtling off to meet it. Two minutes 
later the magnificent British column led by General 
Gibbs was full in sight only three hundred yards 
away, sweeping on with a swift and even motion. 
Three batteries opened on it. Soon obtaining the 
rano-e, they plunged their heavy hail of iron through 
from front to rear, crushing it horribly. This did 
not even check it. Right on it came, a little faster 
— if possible, a little steadier. The cannoneers 
saw and wondered. It was a thrilling exhibition of 
cold, determined, dogged courage. No batteries 
could drive them back. Patterson's heavy guns 
beo-an to bellow from the other side the river. 

On came that solid column. The Americans 
had formed a quadruple line of riflemen and muske- 
teers one behind another ; they withheld their fire 
until the head of the column had come within fair 
rano-e; then each man took deliberate aim and out 
leaped a rattling volley. At the same moment all 
along the works the batteries blazed together. The 
British staggered a moment, then came a forward 
rush ; but the front of the column was swept down ; 
there was a recoil, a break, a precipitate retreat. 



2 30 THE BATTLE OE NEW ORLEANS. 

At this signal check the Americans cheered like 
mad and redoubled their deadly fire. 

Packenham rushed headlong among the men. 
After a desperate effort he reformed the shattered 
and panic-stricken column just beyond the danger 
line and turned it again toward the earthworks and 
the fringe of sulphurous flames that flashed above 
them. This time there was to be no falterino- or 
hesitancy, no thought of retreat. Over the works 
or die. Hat in hand General Packenham rose in 
his saddle and urged his horse to the very front. 
He shouted to his brave men, he beckoned them 
on, and then they set their teeth and followed him. 
It was as heroic a charge as any in history and it 
was repulsed by as fearful a fire as ever belched 
from a repelling line. Packenham led the rio-hf 
Gibbs the left ; the British columns marched steadily 
up to the point-blank range of the batteries. The 
Americans were ready, cool, steady ; their aim, ap- 
parently, was absolutely accurate, for the front ranks 
fell like grass before a scythe. A musket ball 
struck General Packenham through the right arm ; 
on he rode, the shattered arm dangling by his side. 
He did not notice the wound. A deluge of grape 
shot poured along ; one of them crashed through his 
thigh. He fell. Still another struck him, and there 
he died. General Gibbs was borne from the field 
writhing under the terrible pain of a death-wound. 



THE BATTLE CE AE II' ORLEANS. 231 

Down fell Colonel Dale of the Highlanders; down, 
too, fell the Highlanders themseK-es, to the number 
of five hundred and forty-four, never to charge again. 
One thirty-two-pounder gun was charged to the 
muzzle with musket bullets and fired point-blank 
into the head of the rushing column before it. 
The awful blast swept away two hundred men. 
The riflemen picked their red-coat targets and 
took aim as if shooting for a prize. Indeed they 
were shooting for a prize. Behind them was New 
Orleans ; there were the brave women, there the 
little children, there the old men. Behind them was 
their countrv, before them its invaders. Out sans: 
the bullets of Tennessee and Kentucky; forth 
whizzed the missiles of the patriotic Creoles ; on 
crashed the grape and canister aimed by the Barra- 
tarians ; far bounded the heavy round-shot from 
the Louisiana and from the guns beyond the river. 
What column could stand all this } The ranks 
of the British melted down and lay doubly red, 
strewn like flushed autumn leaves over the shot- 
furrowed field. The survivors could not come on. 
They turned and fled, the gusts of death sweeping 
throuirh them, the hail of death fallinc: on them. 
All this time General Jackson had been stalking 
back and forth along his line encouraging his 
men with grim sentences of exhortation. " Give 
it to them, boys! Blow 'em up, boys!" he would 



232 THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS. 

call out with all the embellishments of frontier em- 
phasis. And " the boys " heard and obeyed. . 

By eight o'clock the harvest was over; the red 
field of the eighth of January had been mowed. In 
front of Humphrey's batteries stretched the tan- 
gled wind-rows of mangled dead ; prone beneath the 
deadly riflemen of Beale's little command the red- 
coats lay in heaps; the swaths cut down by Carroll 
and Adair were horrible to see. What slaughter : 
what a victory ! Over two thousand British lay dead 
or helpless on the field. And what of Jackson's 
little army ? How many killed } Just eight men ! 
How many wounded 1 Thirteen men, and no more ! 

Carry the , news to New Orleans. The grand 
army of Packenham is crushed into fragments. 
The city is saved ! 

In the meantime a detachment under Colonel 
Thornton had been ordered by Packenham to 
cross the river and attack the American works 
held by General Morgan. This was done and 
the works were carried by a flanking movement. 
Colonel Thornton w^as wounded in the assault, 
and, soon after assuming command, Colonel Gub- 
bins was ordered to retreat, on account of Packen- 
ham's reverse. He hurriedly recrossed the river 
to find Lambert in command of the crushed and 
disheartened army. Morgan immediately retook 
possession of his evacuated earthworks. 



THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS. 233 

And so ended the battle. Fought after peace 
had been made between Great Britain and the 
United States it was, alas ! a useless slaughter of 
brave men, if only the truth could have been known 
in time. 

There never was a more joyful army than that 
which cheered and tossed hats and shook hands and 
exchanged congratulations behind those low, sodden 
earthworks of Jackson's line. The volatile Creoles 
danced and hugged one another and sang their 
gayest songs. 

General Lambert soon sent a flag of truce and 
asked for an armistice of twenty-four hours with 
the privilege of caring for his wounded and bury- 
ing his dead. This was granted by General Jack- 
son, who could now well afford to rest. 

Happily the American army had but few dead to 
bury, but each grave received a hero worthy a place 
beside those who stood for liberty at Lexington 
and fell within the breastworks of Bunker Hill. 

The British felt that everything had been clone 
that they could have done, and all in vain. The 
very heart and flower of their army, including the 
commanding officers, lay weltering and writhing or 
dead and cold in tlie blood pools of that disastrous 
battlefield. Mournfully enough they performed the 
depressing duty of disheartened soldiers, gathering 
up their mangled comrades on the field of their 



2 34 THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS. 

crushing defeat. Never had English valor wasted 
itself upon a task so utterly unworthy of it and 
never had Englishmen received a more humiliat- 
ing repulse, or a darker dye of disgrace. Little 
comfort to Packenham's men lay in the thought 
that they had shown a courage which the brav- 
est of their enemies had admired ; for even the most 
brutal musketeer of them all felt keenly the re- 
proaches awaiting them when they should return 
to that veteran army, of which they so lately had 
been the choicest flower, only to be compelled to 
acknowledge utter rout at the hands of a mere 
skirmish-line of backwoodsmen. 



CHAPTER X. 



THE OLD REGIME 



HEN the news 
of the victory 
reached New 
Orleans, there 
was such rejoic- 
ing as comes 
only to those 
who feel sudden 
and complete 
relief from over- 
whelmino- ter- 
ror. Women 
"■"--•—-—- -^-^_'""' "" ~ and children, 

old men, invalids, the waiters and watchers, had 
heard the rolling thunder of the fight booming up 
through the fog and their hearts had stood still 
with dread. It had been currently reported that 
the British had determined to pillage and burn the 
city -^ yes, and, infinitely worse, that they had fore- 
doomed the women to a fate too terrible to men- 
tion. The noise of the battle was so tremendous 




236 ' THE OLD REGIME. 

\\\ its significance that when it ceased the blood of 
the listeners almost stopped flowing in their veins. 
What meant the sudden calm after the storm ? 
Was it victory or defeat? They waited and lis- 
tened and watched, but no news came ; all was 
ominous silence and expectancy. The minutes 
were like hours, the hours like days. Suddenly 
down on the battery at the river front there arose 
a wild shout, and a hundred voices took up the cry; 
" Victory ! Victory ! Packenham is crushed ; the 
British are whipped ! Hurrah for Jackson ! " In- 
stantly New Orleans was like a hive when the bees 
are disturbed. The people, men, women and chil- 
dren, black and white, poured into the streets, yell- 
ing, screaming, tossing hats, weeping, laughing, 
wringing hands, praying, dancing, singing, waving 
flags, all as wild as the hysterical excitement could 
render them. 

Jackson gave the British every facility for taking 
care of their wounded and for burying their dead ; 
but so soon as this sad duty had been performed 
he turned again to strengthening his works and to 
watching with closest scrutiny the movements of 
his enemy. There was little need for this caution 
and vigilance. The general in command of the 
British felt that to renew the fight just then would 
be madness. He would wait for the fleet which 
was expected to come up the Mississippi. Sup- 



THE OLD REGIME. 2^,7 

ported by this he might yet be able to reach and 
destroy New Orleans. 

Fort St. PhiHp was down near the mouth of 

l-lie i-ivcr a slight work on a sand-bar, but armed 

with some heavy ordnance. In this fort General 
Jackson had placed three hundred and sixty-six 
men under Major Overton, a brave and able officer. 
The British squadron sailed up and anchored 
within range of the fort on the ninth of January. 
A schooner, a sloop, a brig and two bomb-vessels, 
all well-manned and heavily armed, opened fire. 
Major Overton returned the compliment from his 
water batteries with such effect that the fleet soon 
dropped down out of reach and with their heavy 
guns and some large mortars pounded away, quite 
free from danger, until the seventeenth. By this 
time the Americans had put a heavy mortar in 
position and its great shells began to burst all 
round the ships, each shot showing an improvement 
in aim. It was a mere matter of time. The fleet 
was doomed if it remained. It did not remain. 
On the eighteenth, when Major Overton had at 
length found the range, there was a sudden flurry 
on board, and the squadron was seen setting sail 
and dropping hastily down the river. It had found 
the little fort an impassable barrier. On this same 
day, disheartened, broken, utterly defeated, the 
whole army in front of Jackson took up its sad 



238 THE OLD REGIME. 

march to its fleet on Lake Borgne, and soon after 
it sailed away never to return. Could disaster be 
more humiliating? Could victory be more glori- 
ous? New Orleans rang her bells, filled her 
churches and sent up to Almighty God the fervent 
thanks of a people snatched from the very Jaws 
and fangs of destruction. 

The war was over. The news soon arrived that, 
even before the terrible battle was fought, peace 
had been established between Great Britain and 
the United States. 

Louisiana from this date drew closer to the 
Federal Union, feeling that the blood of the brave 
had cemented her to the other States and that 
henceforth she must grow with the growth of the 
nation and strengthen with its strength. Swift, 
indeed, was her progress. Population increased 
over all her area and her agriculture and commerce 
swelled to amazing proportions. Along the Gulf 
coast and on the marsh-hummocks the culture of 
rice was the chief industry, whilst in the rich areas 
protected by the levees, and on the fertile borders 
or "coasts," the sugar plantations increased with 
wonderful rapidity. In the northern and north- 
western parishes cotton was the staple, though 
Indian corn, potatoes and tobacco were largely cul- 
tivated. No sooner had the war ended than there 
came a rush of immigration and a mighty activity 



THE OLD REGIME. ^^g 

in the shipping interests of New Orleans. The 
immense accumulations of cotton, sugar and mo- 
lasses found quick exportation and the money real- 
ized flooded Louis-iana with wealth. Slave labor 
became profitable almost beyond belief, so produc- 
tive was the soil, so valuable were the products and 
so cheap the means of subsistence. New Orleans 
was the toll-gate of the Mississippi Valley and 
right liberally was the toll poured into her till. 
Her merchants, factors, bankers and warehousemen 
grew rich, she swelled to the proportions of a great 
city, her population was as various as the peoples 
of the earth, and she was as gay and dissipated on 
the one hand as she was decorous, stately, cultured 
and hospitable on the other. Despite the influence 
of a strong and growing element of Anglo-Ameri- 
cans in her population she remained a Creole city 
with the architecture, the language and the cus- 
toms of a foreign, or rather of an alien race. The 
French language was the vehicle of polite expres- 
sion and French modes and customs largely pre- 
vailed. 

The advent of steam navigation upon the river 
was the crowning touch to Louisiana's prosperity 
and to that of her great city. The whole surplus 
produce of the Mississippi and Ohio valleys was 
poured down the current of the mighty stream and 
with it went " packet " loads of planters, traders, 



240 THE OLD REGIME. 

merchants, pleasure-seekers, gamblers, speculators 
in negroes, and who not, all with their faces set 
toward the alluring fascinations of the Crescent 
Queen whose gilded gates shone far down on the 
horizon of the famous " Low country." 

The French language had its battle to fight 
against the English as the two tongues began to 
be mingled all over Louisiana. Of course the 
Creoles clung with uncompromising persistence to 
the sweet sounds of their ancestral language, whilst 
the aggressive and energetic Anglo-x4mericans did 
not hesitate to consider the French toncrue as alien 

O 

to our country and deleterious to its unity of aim 
and of development. It has been said that in this 
struggle the Creoles fought a losing fight, but the 
loss has been negative rather than positive. The 
French language has stood still while the English 
has gained by steady progression. The increment 
has been always persistent, but never large. 

One result of this battle of tongues has been 
that most of the wealthy Creoles have sent their 
children, especially their sons, to Paris for their 
education. Early in the history of New Orleans 
a Creole literature with a marked Parisian flavor 
was founded by some brilliant writers most of 
whom had been educated abroad. Vaudevilles, 
comedies, tragedies and other theatrical composi- 
tions formed the bulk of what was written. The 



THE OLD REGIME. 24 1 

people were enthusiastic play-goers and, besides, 
every winter the city was filled to overflowing with 
visitors who had come for pleasure and who would 
have amusement at any cost. 

In time the influx of a permanent population of 
En^^lish-speaking people divided the city into two 
areas : the French, or Creole quarter, and the 
Ano-lo-American quarter. The line of division is 
a very sharp one even now. So, too, in the State 
at laro-e there is a well-defined boundary to the two 
areas : English and French. The southern part is 
French, the northern part is English, so far as 
language goes. 

The Creoles proper and the Acadians have 
kept themselves together with a reserve and an 
exclusiveness almost impenetrable. This rural 
French population is a steady, plodding, honest, 
virtuous and simply conservative class of people, 
livino- to-day in the remote ancestral fashion with 
little change of dress, architecture, agricultural 
processes or domestic customs since their great- 
great-grandsires began to struggle with poverty in 
the jungles of the hummocks or on the wet prairies 
of the Teche and the Calcassieu, the Attakapas 
and the Opelousas. They are sugar-planters, cattle- 
herders, cotton and rice-planters, fishermen, boat- 
men; but in everything they are alien to the 
rushing, bustling, feverish life that prevails in 



24^ THE OLD REGIME. 

America. This, of course, is descriptive of only 
the uneducated classes and does not apply to the 
cultured and refined Creole families in city or 
country. The latter are the equals of the best 
and most representative people of any part of 
the United States. 

The constitution of Louisiana, as first framed, 
was far from accordant with the spirit of the 
American Union. It had been made to satisfy 
the alien prejudice in favor of hereditary govern- 
ment existing in the State during its early years. As 
the immigration from the Northern and Western 
States continued and swelled the English-speakino- 
population of Louisiana her constitution became a 
legislative bone of contention and at last it was 
remodeled so as to embody most of the distinctive 
features common to the constitutions of the rest of 
our States. This new constitution was framed by 
a convention which met in Baton Rouge in 1844, 
and it went into effect January, 1S46. The popu- 
lation of the State was, by this time, over four 
hundred thousand souls. One year's crop of sugar, 
that of 1S42, had amounted to two hundred thou- 
sand hogsheads, each of not less than one thousand 
pounds in weight. The cotton crops of the State 
were enormous. 

From first to last the history of New Orleans 
has been the history of Louisiana. The commerce 



THE OLD REGIME. 243 

of the city has ever been the exponent and the 
index of the State's condition. Between 18 15 and 
i860, while New Orleans was growing from a strag- 
gling place of twenty thousand people into a mag- 
nificent city of over two hundred thousand souls, 
the whole State was rushing on apace. 

All the existing conditions were against the 
establishment of efficient educational institutions. 
Plantation labor was all done by black slaves, and 
the city and all the towns were given over wholly 
to commerce, whilst the controlling class of white 
people were inclined to seek foreign schools rather 
than to build home ones. The conflict of tongues 
kept up an insurmountable barrier between neigh- 
bor and neighbor and so enfeebled the texture of 
society that common schools were not to be 
thought of in the thinly-populated parishes. The 
English-speaking families sent their children to 
Georgia, Virginia, South Carolina or New England 
to be educated; the French turned their eyes 
across the Atlantic to the schools of Paris. 

This educational exclusiveness worked surely 
to build up a class of aristocrats, rich, cultured, 
refined and magnificently hospitable ; but cut in 
twain by a language-line, which, to a great extent, 
was one of race and of religion as well. An 
educated Creole was neither an American nor a 
Frenchman in the eyes of his English-speaking 



^44 THE OLD EEGIME. 

neighbor of corresponding position and culture, 
and the Creole, though superbly polite, never quite' 
felt that his friend, the Anglo-American over the 
way, was altogether his equal. 

General Claiborne's administration closed in 1816 
and he was succeeded by General Villere who was 
governor of Louisiana until 1820, when Thomas 
B. Robinson was elected. 

In February, 1823, a terrible wave of cold 
weather froze the Mississippi River, killed the 
orange orchards and caused the death of many 
slaves and domestic animals. This calamity, fol- 
lowing closely upon a dreadful epidemic of yellow 
fever and being shortly succeeded by another, 
caused much depression and checked the pros- 
perity of the planters in the sugar districts. 

Henry Johnson was elected governor in 1824; 
in that year the Bank of Louisiana was incor- 
porated. Pierre Derbigny was the next governor; 
he was elected in 1829 and in the following year 
the seat of the State government was fixed at Don- 
aldsonville. Here was convened the Legislature 
that passed the well-known and much discussed 
statute fixing the penalty of death to the crime of 
inciting servile insurrection, whether the act were 
by parol expression on the rostrum or in the pulpit 
or by uttering printed matter charged with the 
virus of abolitionism. An act was passed at the 



THE OLD REGIME. 245 

same time forbidding, under pain of long imprison- 
ment, the teaching of any slave to read, a measure 
deemed necessary in view of the fact that secret 
emissaries were supposed to be at work sowing the 
seeds of discontent among the plantation negroes. 
Governor L^erbigny died and Jacques Uupre, the 
presiding officer of the Senate, filled his place until 
the following year, when Bienvenu Roman was 
elected. In 1S32 a penitL-ntiary was built at Baton 
Rouge. That, too, was the year that cholera and 
yellow fever combined to make such havoc in New 
Orleans, more than five thousand victims falling 
before the terrible scourge. 

The sugar industry of Louisiana was now at the 
high tide of prosperity. There were more than 
seven hundred sugar establishments in the State 
and the traffic of New Orleans was enormous. 
The river was almost blocked up with ships from 
every country, and every wharf was packed with 
lines of steamboats, one behind another. The 
sugar-planters had become a w^ealthy and a gen- 
erously open-handed class ; they had built spacious 
mansions and were living in almost royal style; 
but they had adopted a wasteful system of finan- 
cierino-, encumberinor their estates with debts and 
paying a ruinous rate of interest. Slaves increased 
rapidly in number, and apace with all this accumu- 
lation of wealth and mortgages grew the deadly 



246 THE OLD REGIME. 

fascination of speculative operations. Land rose 
to an inflated value and men went .wild over 
schemes for the founding of towns some of which 
were actually surveyed in the midst of cypress 
swamps covered with water. 

Edward White was elected governor in 1S35, 
and it was in the midst of his official term that a 
financial crisis was reached in Louisiana (in the 
whole country as well) precipitating distress, and 
in a degree ruin, upon the sugar-planters. The 
modification by Congress of the tariff on sugar 
had already depressed the planting industry and 
now, when the banks suddenly stopped specie pay- 
ment and withdrew much of that liberal support 
upon which the planters had so long relied, there 
came a panic which for a time threatened destruc- 
tion to the agricultural staple of the State. 

In 1839 Bienvenu Roman was again elected 
governor. By this time the banks had resumed 
specie payments and the planters were beginning 
to take heart. Alexandre Mouton was elected 
Roman's successor and took his seat in 1843. 
Isaac Johnson, the first governor under the new 
constitution, was inaugurated on the twelfth of 
February, 1846. The war between the United 
States and Mexico came on soon after and Louisi- 
ana bore her part in the struggle, sending troops 
to General Taylor and sharing in the victories he 



THE OLD REGIME. 247 

gained. joscpli Walker succeeded Johnson as 
eovcrnor in 18 so and Baton Rou2;e became the 
capital of the State. It was about this time that 
General Lopez the " fillibuster " began his prepa- 
rations in New Orleans for an attack upon Cuba. 
He succeeded in attracting to his enterprise a com- 
pany of imaginative and adventurous young men 
and set sail. The Cubans captured him and he 
was executed along with a number of his com- 
panions. Great indignation was excited in New 
Orleans by the news of the fate of the expedition 
and the Spanish consul was mobbed and badly 
treated. The Know Nothing party in the State 
now added its influence to the existing prejudice 
against aliens and there was tremendous pressure 
brought to bear on the public temper resulting in 
most disgraceful scenes at elections. 

P. O. Hebert was elected governor in 1S53. It 
was during his administration that railroads were 
successfully introduced and many advances made 
in the prosperity of Louisiana. Robert Wyckliffe 
came next in the succession of governors, being 
inaugurated in 1S56. He was succeeded in i860 
by Thomas O. Moore. 

Such is an outline sketch of the gubernatorial 
succession in Louisiana up to the eve of the great 
fratricidal war. We may now turn back to note 
some of the more important incidents of Louisiana's 



248 THE OLD REGIME. 

story from the close of Claiborne's administration 
up to 1S61. 

One of the first efforts of the law-makers was in 
the direction of suppressing the crime of dueling, 
but, although to kill another in a duel was, as early 
as 181 7, declared a capital offence, there appears 
to have been no enforcement of the law. Public 
sentiment was in favor of the "code of honor" and 
enforced it with relentless severity. There were 
schools of fencing in New Orleans as late as 1858, 
where by expert maitrcs cT armes young men were 
taught the art of slashing each other with broad- 
swords, or of delivering with precision and grace 
the fatal thrust of the rapier. He who refused to 
fight when properly challenged by his social equal 
was ostracised; he who failed to resent an insult 
in due accord with the code was also disgraced. 

At one period the Oaks, or, as the Creoles called 
the spot, C limes d A Hard, was a dueling ground 
which witnessed almost daily the fierce and bloody 
encounters of the jeunesse doree of New Orleans. 
Even to this day one may not listen long among 
the loungers at certain haunts of the Creole youth, 
without hearing the phrase coup de pointc a droite. 

One most beneficent effect, however, this barbar- 
ous dueling habit wrought upon society : it forced 
men to be polite and circumspect in their inter- 
course with one another, and it made New Orleans 







^*.V>1^ 












^J 










THE OLD REGIME. 251 

a city where courtly manners exerted an influence 
wholly charming and irresistible. Under the sur- 
face, however, there was a brutalizing tendency. 
It was impossible for a civilized and highly-cultured 
people not to feel that a human slaughter-pen 
under the name of a dueling-ground was incom- 
patible with the development of a Christian pros- 
perity and that a constant defiance of law and 
humanity must at length recoil with bitter force 
upon the people encouraging or even tolerating 
it. But the duello had attached itself so firmly to 
societv in New Orleans that it was not shaken 
off until after the close of the great war. 

Another excrescence, seemingly inseparable from 
the public life of Louisiana, is the lottery. Frater- 
nal and charitable institutions, schools and col- 
leges, land-improvement companies and, indeed, 
nearly every enterprise in the State at one time or 
another has appealed to the aid of a lottery scheme 
to fill its treasury and strengthen its credit. 

The system of chartering public gambling con- 
cerns under the title of Banking Companies was 
for a long time a source of popular corruption, and 
although penal statutes were enacted forbidding a 
lower order of gambling, they were never enforced ; 
the gilded hells, where went on day and night every 
eame of chance or skill known to the devotees of 
sporting, were on almost every street in New 



252 THE OLD REGIME. 

Orleans. They were on a scale of splendor and 
luxury almost equal to that of the legion of inflated 
railroad, improvement and banking establishments 
whose privileges granted by legislative enactment 
were practically unlimited. 

In 1836 the general assembly chartered corpora- 
tions whose aggregate capital was nearly forty mil- 
lions of dollars. Some of the banks issued paper 
to more than five times the amount of their avail- 
able assets and embarked in the wildest specula- 
tions drawing with them a large number of the 
wealthy planters whose paper they were holding. 
The mania for land-speculation was at its height 
when on the thirteenth of May, 1837, the financial 
collapse came which caused fourteen banks in New 
Orleans to suspend specie payments. 

For five or six years great depression prevailed 
in the sugar industry, but cotton-culture increased 
rapidly, the area theretofore devoted to cane being 
gradually encroached upon, until many of the larg- 
est and finest sugar plantations had been turned 
into cotton-fields. Then came another speculative 
rush which advanced the price of cotton far beyond 
the line of safety and the inevitable consequence 
followed : ruin to the investors. Land fell in value 
to such a degree that sales were almost impossible. 
Banks rushed at once to an extreme in a direction 
opposite to their former lavish liberality to the 



THE OLD REGIME. 253 

planters and refused to aid even deserving public 
or private enterprises. It was nut before 1845 that 
lio-ht began to break through the financial cloud ; 
but the planters had managed their own affairs 
better after their disastrous experiences and were 
(rrowins independent of the banks. Gradually 
they had struggled forth from their incumbrances 
into a condition of prosperity founded on a solid 
basis. 

In 1S46 the general assembly appropriated one 
hundred thousand dollars for the purpose of equip- 
ping and forwarding troops to General Taylor on 
the Mexican border. Several regiments were sent ; 
they arrived just in time to be available at Mata- 
moras. On June first of this year the State granted 
to the United States the right to erect and main- 
tain forts and public buildings at Proctor's Landing, 
on Lake Borgne, at Forts Jackson, Wood, Pike 
and St. Philip, battery Bienvenu and Tour Dupre. 

In 1847 an appropriation of one hundred and 
fifty thousand dollars was made for the erection of 
a new state house at Baton Rouge. During this 
year also was founded the University of Louisiana 
in New Orleans and the sum of twenty-five thou- 
sand dollars was appropriated to build the structures 
now known as the University Place on Common 
Street. 

The time had arrived for making an end of the 



^54 THE OLD REGIME. 

bankrupt corporations which had been preying so 
long on the commerce and agriculture of the State, 
and the government appointed liquidators for them 
whose duty was to close out their business on 
equitable terms. 

Meantime almost every year had seen more or 
less advance in the improvement of levees and 
water channels in the State. Appropriations for 
this purpose were often quite liberal, but the en- 
gineering was badly done and too frequently the 
contracts for public works were loosely let and still 
more loosely performed. The public school system 
of the State was formed and reformed, organized 
and reorganized and a permanent school fund was 
several times established and re-established. In 
1855 New Orleans was authorized to institute pub- 
lic schools of her own. In 1856 a singular calam- 
ity overtook three hundred persons on Last Island 
westward of the Mississippi's mouth and just off 
the Gulf coast of Southern Louisiana. The island 
was a slender crescent twenty-five miles long and 
less than a mile in average width and had been for 
many years the summer residence of planters and 
their families from the Attakapas and La Fourche 
region. During the night of the ninth of August 
a storm arose which rapidly develo]Ded to frightful 
violence with a deluge of rain and a mighty lifting 
of the sea. All the boats were dashed to pieces 



THE OLD REGIME. 255 

and every building blown away. When daylight 
came the wind was still increasing and in the 
afternoon the island was overwhelmed and literally 
washed away. Nearly two thirds of the unfortu- 
nate persons sojourning thereon were engulfed and 
were never seen again. The survivors were those 
who clung to rafts and floating pieces of wreck, 
or who climbed into the tops of the trees on the 
highest part of the island. 

The excitement, for several years systematically 
worked up at each election in Louisiana against 
foreigners, culminated finally in 1858 and for a few 
days a battle was every moment expected at New 
Orleans. Five hundred men armed to the teeth 
and acting under direction of a vigilance committee 
seized the Court House in the city and also took 
possession of the State Arsenal at Jackson Square. 
This was on the fourth of June, three days before 
the time set for the city election. On the follow- 
ino- day reinforcements amounting to one thousand 
armed men joined them. They fortified their posi- 
tions and erected strong barricades across the 
streets. On the other hand the Know Nothings 
occupied Lafayette Square with a strong force and 
a battery of cannon. Actual collision was avoided, 
however, and by dint of much parleying peace was 
restored in time to insure a quiet election, the 
Know Nothings electing the mayor. 



256 THE OLD REGIME. 

During the next two years prosperity and happi- 
ness reigned throughout Louisiana. The cotton 
industry was at its meridian and the sugar planta- 
tions were abundantly remunerative. The banks 
had reached a safe basis, money was plenty, there 
was no epidemic of yellow fever, the slaves were 
quiet; indeed every element of commercial, agri- 
cultural, social and political prosperity was present. 
And yet all was not well with the people. There 
was a cloud on the horizon ; the muttering of a dis- 
tant but approaching storm was in the air. 

Over-statement is scarcely possible in attempt- 
ing to portray the domestic charm, the ample 
leisure, the rich luxury and the almost unlimited 
hospitality which belonged to this closing period 
of the old regime in Louisiana. The plantation 
homes were not, as a rule, very imposing or beauti- 
ful structures ; but they were large, airy, comfort- 
able, built for use from veranda to garret. This is 
true as well of the New Orleans mansions, where 
room appears to have been the main object of the 
builders. Household servants were numerous and 
thoroughly trained, so that a large house crowded 
with guests gave no trouble to host or hostess. 
Horses, carriages, dogs and guns were always ready, 
every comfort and luxury that wealth and liberal 
effort could procure and every personal attention 
that politeness could suggest made the social rela- 



THE OLD REGIME. 257 

tions of the people peculiarly charming. Indeed 
many of the grand estates were comparable in 
every respect to those of England and France, 
while the hospitality dispensed by their owners 
was on a scale equaled nowhere else in the world. 
The intercourse between the families of the planters 
and those of the elite of New Orleans was very 
intimate. Visits of indefinite duration w^ere ex- 
chano-ed and in the hot season the various sum- 
mer resorts on the coast were always crowded with 
coteries of brilliant men and beautiful women. 

At the base of all this ease, luxury, leisure and 
domestic and social happiness was negro slavery 
with its attendant evils and its germ of destruction. 
For years there had been intermittent spasms of 
uneasiness among the people on account of certain 
evidences tending to show that emissaries from the 
North were attempting to sow the seed of discontent 
and revolt in the hearts of the plantation slaves. In 
response to the forebodings and fears aroused by 
these secret agents of the abolitionists, the legisla- 
ture of Louisiana passed many severe and much- 
criticised black laws. Read at this distance from 
their date, these appear far more barbarous than 
they really were. They grew out of the real need 
for heroic measures of precaution in communities 
where the slaves outnumbered the whites ten to one. 

Far-seeing men began to distinguish signs in the 



258 THE OLD REGIATE. 

political sky foretelling the approach of the final 
struggle between the North and the South, long 
before that struggle took any definite shape. But 
when the Charleston convention had broken into 
factions; when the elements of the Democratic 
party were scattered and when the Republican party 
had solidified its forces for the campaign of i860, 
a waft of maddening anticipation passed over the 
people of the South. Singularly enough, however, 
Louisiana was closely balanced in her vote at the 
ensuing election. Breckenridge received 22,681 
votes. Bell 20,204 and Douglass 7,625. Thomas 
O. Moore was elected governor and immediately 
called a special session of the legislature. This 
body met on the tenth of December and soon after 
passed an act for an election to choose deleo-ates 
to a State convention. 

The election was held on the seventh of January, 
1 86 1. The legislature, in view of the action of 
other Southern States, passed an appropriation bill 
setting apart five hundred thousand dollars for 
military purposes. A military commission was ap- 
pointed and every step was taken preliminary to a 
formal withdrawal from the Union. The o-en- 
eral assembly was visited by Hon. Wirt Adams, 
the commissioner for the State of Mississippi, who 
delivered an address before that body on the 
twelfth of January, detailing the plan of action 



THE OLD REGIME. 259 

matured in his own State and eloquently insisting 
upon the prompt co-operation of Louisiana. South 
Carolina had already seceded. The news of this 
decisive step had been celebrated in New Orleans 
by a great gathering of the people, who showed their 
approval by the firing of cannon and the display 
of the pelican flag amid the wildest bursts of enthu- 
siastic cheering, speech-making, toast-drinking and 
general conorratulations. 

When the convention met on the twenty-third 
of January at the State capital it was a foregone 
conclusion that an ordinance of secession would be 
adopted. The vote was taken on the twenty-sixth, 
and resulted in a record of one hundred and thirteen 
veas and seventeen nays. The ordinance was then 
presented to the members for their signatures. 
Seven delegates refused to affix their names ; the 
others present, one hundred and twenty-one in 
number, promptly signed the document ; the speaker 
pronounced the solemn declaration of Louisiana's 
withdrawal from the Federal Union ; the die had 

been cast. 

Soon after this Governor Moore took possession 
of the military stores, arsenals and forts in the 
State and the legislature in regular session approved 
his acts. On the twenty-ninth of January the con- 
vention w^as again brought together in New Orleans 
and deleo-ates were chosen and sent to a general 



26o THE OLD REGIME. 

convention of the Southern States to be held in 
Montgomery, Alabama. 

When a constitution had been framed for the 
Confederate States it was promptly ratified by 
Louisiana on March 22, 1861. At this time the 
population of the State was nearly seven hundred 
thousand and her commercial, agricultural and 
financial condition surpassed that of any previous 
period of her history. Flushed with prosperity and 
tingling with the excitement induced by the stirrino- 
events of the hour her people felt themselves ready 
to face any possible emergency. 

It was not for human vision to foresee the ter- 
rible consequences of the struggle which was be- 
ginning. It was not for human ears to hear, a few 
months in advance, the thunder of Farragut's guns 
as his fleet steamed up the river past the forts. 
Who could dream of the fate in store for the beau- 
tiful Crescent City.? Little more than a year's 
space lies between the gala hour when the first brave 
young men enlisted and marched away from New 
Orleans to join the Confederate forces and that 
later day, too dreadful for description, when amid 
fire and smoke and a storm of shot and shell, the 
Federal fleet ploughed its way to an anchorage in 
front of the doomed city and shook out the folds of 
the triumphant flag of our country. 



CHAPTER XI. 



IN THE CIVIL WAR. 




lot showed that Louis- 
iana was not a pro- 
nounced secession 
State. In other 
words it disclosed a 
powerful conservative 
element favoring a 
peaceful settlement of 
the slavery question, without separation from the 
Federal Union. There were very few abolition- 
ists within the limits of the commonwealth — prob- 
ably none save emissaries from the North, and these 
dared not express themselves publicly. No doubt 
a considerable number of thoughtful men, whose 
wealth consisted of land and negroes, hesitated to 
take the daring step of separation mindful the des- 
perate risk it involved. 

Moreover the life of the Louisiana planter was a 
charming one and furnished with every element 
which is antagonistic to war. Why hazard all this 

261 



262 IN THE CIVIL WAR. 

wealth, this idyllic isolation, this almost absolute 
autocracy, this affluent freedom, on the dreadful 
and tricksy fortune of battle? This question no 
doubt arose in many a brave heart that was as true 
as steel to Louisiana and to the South. There was 
to be no faltering, however, when the final moment 
came. The drum-beat on the Mississippi was the 
signal for the perfect crystallization of public sen- 
timent throughout the State. The French popula- 
tion at once stood forth and heartily joined hands 
with the Anglo-Americans. Differences of speech, 
religion and ancestry gave way before the impulse 
of a courageous and chivalric spirit. Louisiana 
rushed to arms. 

The Mississippi River cut the Confederate States 
in two. It was a mighty highway, a stream capable 
of floating fleets of any size from St. Louis to the 
Gulf. As a consequence it very early became the 
object of military attention. If the Federal forces 
could open the river the States of Missouri, Texas, 
Arkansas and a large part of Louisiana would be 
severed from the newly-formed government and 
rendered practically powerless to perform their part 
in carrying on even a defensive war. New Orleans 
sat at the Gulf-gate. Vicksburg was really the upper 
barrier, although strong efforts were made to for- 
tify and hold Island No. lo and other points farther 
north. Forts Jackson and St. Philip were made 



IN THE CIVIL WAR. 263 

very strong and were mounted witli the heaviest 
and most effective guns that could be procured. 
Fort Pike, over on the Rigolets between Lake 
Borgne and Lake Ponchartrain, was also put in 
order and armed for the defence of that pass. 

Virginia was the first real battle-ground, but 
Louisiana had not long to wait for her turn. While 
her brave sons were tramping with Lee and John- 
son and Jackson in the far-off northern Valley, the 
plans were being matured for an invasion of her 
territory and for the capture of her beautiful and 
rich old city. On the north, in Kentucky, Missouri 
and Tennessee, powerful Federal armies were press- 
ing southward accompanied at each step by flotillas 
of gun-boats on the Mississippi, the Tennessee and 
the Cumberland Rivers. 

War meant more to Louisiana than to any other 
State in the South, for two reasons: she was a 
cotton and sugar State and she was at the mercy 
of the Mississippi River. \\\ a large sense New 
Orleans was Louisiana, and to paralyze New Orleans 
was to utterly ruin the State. 

Early in 1862 a formidable expedition against 
New Orleans was fitted out consistino: of a land 
force numbering fifteen thousand soldiers and a 
fleet of forty-seven vessels, eighteen steam gun-boats 
and twenty-four schooners. General Benjamin F. 
Butler commanded the armv, Admiral Farrao-ut 



264 IN THE CIVIL WAR. 

the fleet. The plan was to sail round to the mouth 
of the Mississippi, enter the river, reduce the forts 
and capture the city. It was an experiment of 
a doubtful nature, but well worth trying, in view 
of possible success. 

The forts were powerful ; they were near to each 
other, on opposite sides of the river; the Confed- 
erates were quite confident that no fleet could pass 
them. New Orleans, already drained of her bravest 
and best fighting men, felt no sense of insecurity 
when she heard the thunder of the first guns down 
the river. She was gay and defiant, remxcmbering 
the fate of Packenham and the victories in Mexico. 
She knew that between her and her enemies were 
as good soldiers as ever went to battle, forts as 
strong, so she thought, as could be built; a flotilla 
of iron-clad gun-boats believed to be impregnable. 
Why should the Cresent City be afraid t 

Already on many bloody fields the Confederate 
armies had achieved signal victories and the hearts 
of the Southern people were beating a hopeful 
measure from Richmond to Galveston. The songs 
of Randall and Flash, of Requier and Hayne and 
Ticknor were on every breeze ; the chivalry of the 
old South was at the front ; the women were em- 
broidering its flags and cheering it on ; the world 
was watching it; even the slaves were more docile 
and industrious than in the days of peace. 



I 



JN THE CIVIL WAR. 265 

There was, however, a marked change in the 
condition of New Orleans. The river was no 
longer full of foreign vessels, the docks were not 
lined with double and triple rows of steamboats, 
the levee had lost its air of bustle and energy, the 
sheds, though well filled with cotton, rice and sugar, 
looked lonely and idle. On Canal Street the shops 
were not crowded with transient customers, as 
any fine April day would formerly have found them. 
In Royal Street the polite French Creoles met 
one another, shrugged their shoulders, and, wao-. 
ging their heads in the direction of the distant 
booming broad-side thunder, exchanged light re- 
marks and passed on. Jackson and St. Philip 
would soon give those Yankees enough of iron 
compliments. Still, as the pounding increased and 
no news reached the listeners as to how the fight 
was going, a chill of uneasiness now and again crept 
through the strongest hearts. What if the forts 
should fall.? 

The bombardment began on the eighteenth of 
April, 1862. General Butler's army had been en- 
camped on Ship Island. Commodore Farragut's 
fieet took position within range of the forts and for 
six days subjected them to a tremendous fire which 
was returned with unflagging spirit. This experi- 
ment disclosed the fact that the forts could not 
be reduced, but it also suggested to Farragut the 



266 IN THE CIVIL WAR. 

possibility of steaming past them and attacking 
the Confederate flotilla. This consisted of the 
two rams Manassas and Louisiana, and fourteen 
gunboats. 

The Confederates had stretched a cable of iron 
across the river from bank to bank and near the 
forts; behind this barrier lay the gunboats and 
rams. The river surface gave fair space for 
manoeuvring and those who witnessed the contest 
ao^ree in describinf^r it as one of the most awful 
spectacles imaginable. 

The Federal commander, with a view to distract- 
ing attention from his real purpose, opened a fire 
on Fort Jackson from every gun-boat that could 
command it, and then in the midst of the din and 
excitement, assailed the cable and the Confederate 
fleet. An observer who had the best opportunity 
to view coolly and calmly a large part of the scene 
says that at one time the splashing of the water by 
the heavy shot and shell from the gun-boats and 
from the forts gave the river the appearance of 
frightful ebullition, as if volcanoes were beneath it. 

This was a fight very different from the one 
between Packenham and Jackson. One discharge 
of a gun on an iron-clad vessel burned as much 
powder as Jackson's riflemen fired during the 
entire day. There were one hundred and twenty- 
eight guns in the forts, most of them very heavy; 



JN THE CIVIL WAR. 267 

but many of them were old and inefficient, while 
the attacking {)art of the Federal fleet carried 
two hundred and fifty-eight guns of the latest 
and best pattern. To aid the forts the Confed- 
erates had a fleet of thirteen vessels close at 
hand and a battery on shore at Chalmette near 
the old battle-o'round of the famous eiehth of 
January, 18 15. 

At about four o'clock on the morping of the 
twenty-fourth of April, the final assault was begun 
by a concentrated fire upon Fort Jackson from 
the entire Federal fleet. Both forts immediately 
responded with every available gun and the Con- 
federate steamer, the Governor Moore, joined in 
promptly. The struggle which ensued was a ter- 
rific one. The Federal fleet made a rush, broke 
through the obstructions and steamed in between 
the forts under a cross-fire which it would seem 
impossible for any vessel to withstand. Thirteen 
of them passed, however, firing tremendous broad- 
sides into the Confederate vessels as they came up 
with them. The forts had done everything that it 
was possible for them to do. For six days and six 
nights the brave commander Gen. J. K. Duncan, 
and his heroic men, had borne up under hard- 
ships and dangers terrible enough to have appalled 
any but iron hearts. Now nothing but the Con- 
federate flotilla and the battery at Chalmette lay 



268 I^T THE CIVIL WAR. 

between New Orleans and the Federal fleet. The 
Governor Moore of the Southern fleet eneao-ed 
the Varuna and with the aid of the ram Stone- 
wall Jackson sunk her, but the Moore was in turn 
disabled and had to be fired by her commander. 
The Manassas was destroyed by the Mississippi; 
the Stonewall Jackson was burned ; the Louis- 
iana, the McRae and the Defiance were captured 
by the Federals; in a word the Confederate fleet 
was swept from the river as if by a whirlwind. As 
for the battery at Chalmette it was powerless to 
do anything without the aid of the gun-boats and 
rams. 

Genera] Lovell, who was in command at New 
Orleans, had come down the river in a steamboat 
to observe the operations and was very nearly cap- 
tured ; he hastened back to the city to withdraw 
his forces. When the news spread through the 
streets that the Federal fleet had passed the forts 
and had destroyed the Confederate flotilla, a strange 
scene followed ; a scene impossible, perhaps, in any 
other American city under parallel circumstances. 

The brave, active, fighting men of New Orleans 
were far away in the armies of the South ; but 
they had left behind a slinking swarm of human 
vermin, the descendants of off-scourinors from 
Europe, the progeny of the cordon bleu, the squalid 
mongrels that haunted the dirty alleys. These, 



IN THE CIVIL WAR. 269 

when they saw a hopeless panic seize the good 
people of the city, poured forth from, their dens 
and began an indiscriminate pillaging of houses, 
shops and storage-sheds. Thus while the better 
class of citizens were frantically setting fire to the 
cotton (some twelve thousand bales) the cut-throats 
and ruffians, the hardened women and even the 
lawless children were raging from place to place, 
back and forth, here and there, wildly plundering 
and aimlessly destroying — a mob of thieves mad- 
dened by the overwhelming license of the occasion. 
All the public materials, consisting of army 
supplies, were heaped up in the middle of the 
streets and burned. General Lovell withdrew his 
soldiers on the evening of the twenty-fourth, leaving 
the city at the mercy of the Federal fleet, which at 
one o'clock on the following day steamed up the 
river and anchored in the middle of the stream not 
far from the foot of Canal Street. By this time a 
degree of order had been restored, but the people 
were still wild with excitement. They could not 
realize that New^ Orleans was indeed a captured 
city ; that the " Yankee " fleet was lying before its 
open gate. The mob which lately had been com- 
mitting such foul deeds, now swayed back and 
forth in the streets, hooting, yelling and cursing, 
urging the people to resist the landing of the 
Federals. 



270 IN THE CIVIL WAR. 

Commodore Farragiit demanded the formal sur- 
render of the city, but the mayor was powerless. 
He could not surrender the city while the people 
were controlled by an unreasoning mob. Conse- 
quently, on the twenty-ninth, a detachment under 
command of Fleet Captain H. H. Bell was sent 
ashore to take possession of the public buildings. 

Before this, however, on the twenty-sixth, a flao- 
placed by Farragut's order on the United States 
Mint had been hauled down by W. B. Mumford 
and delivered over to the mob who tore it into 
shreds. General Butler afterwards caused Mum- 
ford to be tried for treason and hanoed. 

General Butler, once in possession of New 
Orleans, placed the city under the most rigid form 
of martial law and did some acts for which he has 
been justly criticised. It is true that the more 
violent element of the population of New Orleans 
gave him great provocation, but provocation cannot 
be considered against defenceless women and chil- 
dren to the extent of justifying their over-harsh 
treatment at the hands of a man. Of course 
those were war-days and it is difficult to consider 
fairly all the circumstances. A woman's tongue 
is sharper than a sword, but a man's temper should 
be fine enough to turn its point. 

In the main, however. General Butler's course 
was the best possible for the welfare of the people. 



IN THE CIVIL WAR. 271 

He took prom})! measures for cleaning the streets 
of the city and for guarding it against pestilence 
and used only such authority as he deemed to be 
necessary to the safety of his command and for 
the proper government of the place. He enforced 
at least a show of respect for the Federal flao- and 
grimly enough, mingled acts of touching kindness 
with his harshest measures. If he had been more 
successful than Packenham, he did not visit upon 
the captured city any of the consequences threat- 
ened by the boastful English invaders. Still, in 
many a breast in New Orleans, his iron adminis- 
tration will long be remembered with a shiver of 
horror and resentment. He could not enforce his 
authority over much of the State outside the city 
and for a long time a large part of the people of 
Louisiana were, to all intents and purposes, with- 
out government of any kind. 

It appears strange that the Confederate authori- 
ties should have been permitted this easy capture 
of New Orleans. Realizing the immense import- 
ance of the river and considering the depression 
which they well knew must follow the loss of so 
prominent a city they should have defended it at 
all hazards. There must have been a very weak 
management of their Navy Department, for the 
iron-clads were all found to be either unservice- 
able or badly mismanaged during the fight. Had 



2 72 IN THE CIVIL WAR. 

they been fairly manageable, Farragut's fleet could 
have been held under the fire of the forts until 
destroyed or driven back. 

No sooner had the Federal forces settled them- 
selves in New Orleans than the Union fleet was 
made ready for operations farther up the river.- 
Baton Rouge was taken and held until August 
when General Breckenridge, whose army was en- 
camped on the Amite River, marched to attack 
that city. He expected the Confederate iron-clad, 
the Arkansas, to co-operate with him ; but, like all 
the rest, that much-vaunted vessel was unmanage- 
able and had to be burned to keep the enemy from 
taking her. A battle was fought in which the 
Confederate forces were for the time victorious, 
but a little later Baton Rouge was re-taken and 
the Federals forthwith began preparations for over- 
runnino- the State. General Weitzel with a strong 
force set out from New Orleans in October and 
after a number of light engagements drove the 
Confederates out of the southern parishes. 

General Alfred Mouton, a brave and intrepid 
Creole, had early in 1863 collected an army of near 
two thousand men and was encamped in the Parish 
of St. Mary not far from Franklin. In the mean- 
time General Banks had succeeded General Butler 
in command at New Orleans, and on the fourteenth 
of April he attacked Mouton with a largely superior 



IN THE CIVIL WAR. IJT, 

force. The engagement was an extremely bloody 
one, the Confederates fighting with the heroism of 
despair. The victory was with the Federals, who 
after a heavy loss drove their enemy back upon 
Alexandria. 

Port Hudson was now the only strong Confed- 
erate foothold in the State of Louisiana, and this 
was soon relinquished. General Grant was pound- 
ing away at Vicksburg, which surrendered on the 
fourth of July, 1863 ; on the eighth General Banks 
took Port Hudson. This was the last blow on the 
gates of the Mississippi ; they swung wide open ; the 
Confederacy was split in two. 

Louisiana, however, was far from being aban- 
doned by her plucky defenders. Under the Federal 
authority an election was held on the twenty-second 
of February, 1864, at New Orleans and a few other 
places near by, by which Michael Hahn was chosen 
as governor of Louisiana. About two weeks later 
Colonel Henry Watkins Allen was elected to the 
same office by the people outside the Federal lines. 
He was inaugurated at Shreveport, which was now 
the Confederate seat of government in the State. 

General Kirby Smith was in command of all the 
Confederate forces west of the Mississippi River, 
but it was difficult for him to keep his men together. 
Indeed the great game of war was nearing its end. 
General Banks had been so reinforced that his army 



2 74 IN THE CIVIL WAR. 

consisted of three corps aggregating nearly forty- 
five thousand men, perfectly armed and equipped. 
He issued orders for a movement upon the Con- 
federate army in the Red River Valley, and in 
Western Louisiana. The first of these corps he 
led himself, by way of Bayou Teche ; General 
A. J. Smith ascended Red River with the second 
corps and General Steele marched southward from 
Camden, Arkansas, with the third. 

On the eighth of April a battle was fought near 
the small village of Mansfield, situated between 
Shreveport and Natchitoches. The Confederates 
were commanded by General Richard Taylor, son 
of President Zachary Taylor. General Banks was 
defeated and driven back upon Pleasant Hill. 
Taylor was to prevent Banks from joining Gen. 
A. J. Smith. To this end he followed rapidly 
and brought on another sharp engagement at Pleas- 
ant Hill, the result of which was of no importance, 
as the signal reverses suffered by Lee and John- 
ston in Virginia and North Carolina a few days 
later, put an end to the war. Indeed the opening 
of the Mississippi should have terminated the 
struggle ; there was no longer any hope for the 
South with that mighty highway lying unguarded 
from St. Louis to the Belize. 

General Richard Taylor surrendered to General 
Canby, on the fourth of May, and on the twenty- 



IN THE CIVIL WAR. 275 

sixtli General Kirby Smith laid down his arms. 
A long breath of relief escaped from the lips of a 
depressed, impoverished and decimated people. A 
shout of triumph arose from the conquerors. The 
awful period of carnage was completed. 

In Louisiana the immediate effect of peace was 
nearly as dreadful as that of war. The flower of 
her male population lay on the fields of Virginia, 
Maryland, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Tennessee; 
her homes were desolate ; on every street, in every 
door-yard limped the shattered wreck of a husband, 
a father, a son, a brother, a betrothed. The calm 
after the storm was the calm of despair. 

The Proclamation of Emancipation had been sent 
forth by President Lincoln on the first of January, 
1863, but it had no general effect until after the 
surrender of the Southern armies. With peace came 
freedom, but it was freedom with darkness on its 
wings, with gloom in its face, with evil spirits 
attending it. 

Hundreds of thousands of nesrroes, i2:norant 
and wholly unused to an independent existence, 
were turned loose upon the plantations as free 
as their late masters, but penniless and helpless. 
The planters, on the other hand, who were the 
owners of the soil and of all the personal property 
thereon, found themselves almost as helpless as 
were the negroes. A\'hat was to be done } 



2 7.6 IN THE CIVIL WAR. 

There was no money, the plantations had been per- 
mitted to run down, the sugar-mills, cotton-gins and 
rice-mills were out of repair, many of them had 
been burned. Who could rebuild them ? Who 
would work them when repaired ? 

The negroes had been filled with a crude and dan- 
gerous notion of the extent of their freedom and 
they began to look about them for the great reward 
which American Liberty is supposed to bestow. 
In their poor benighted imaginations swam dreams 
of wealth and luxury, the social position of the white 
man, the power of politics, the fascinations of the 
cities. Like the lotos-eaters, they would not worry 
or work any longer; they would simply grasp free- 
dom and float away into the heaven of rest and 
plenty. Why had all this fighting and bloodshed, 
all this wide conflagration and all this terrible sac- 
rifice of life and limb and property been ordered 
and executed, if not for their sake ? And where 
was the supreme gain to them ? It must be some- 
where. They would go presently and find it. 
Never was there a more pathetic phase of life, 
never a more dangerous one. 

The planters, most of them scarred veterans of 
the Southern armies, returned to their spacious 
homes and their broad acres to find themselves 
poor and unable to make use of any means for re- 
newing their fortunes. The former slaves now 



IN THE CIVIL WAR. 279 

hovered around tliem in a dark swarm — idle, luingry 
freedmen invested with all the rights, privileges 
and franchises of American citizens, but without 
the knowledge of the demands of life, without 
fitness for the heavy responsibilities suddenly cast 
upon them. The negroes were largely in the 
majority ; at the same time many of the* most 
intelligent and trustworthy of the white men had 
been disfranchised. 

It will be seen at a glance what a field Louisiana 
presented for the operations of the unscrupulous 
politician. How promptly this field was occupied 
and to what an unbearable degree of shameless 
political debauchery its chief possessors progressed 
before they were throttled by a maddened people 
is better left out of this story, or sketched by hints 
rather than painted in full colors. The political 
sequels that followed the disease of war may be 
analyzed by a specialist. I have no taste for the 
task. 

Happily the impressionist in historical work can 
represent a great deal by what he does not describe. 
It would seem impossible for the public life of any 
State to reach a lower condition of moral and po- 
litical rottenness and depravity than that of the 
Louisiana Government from the close of the war 
up to the fourteenth of September, 1874. On that 
day there was a revolution. 



28o IN THE CIVIL WAR. 

The white people of New Orleans and of the 
State had borne all that it was possible for them to 
bear. Defeat in battle and reduction from affluence 
to poverty could be endured, but a corrupt, ava- 
ricious and fraud-engendered system of government 
which set ignorant negroes and conscienceless aliens 
as absolute rulers over the destiny of Louisiana and 
over the very liberties and lives of her people, could 
not be submitted to by the sons of the men who 
fought with Andrew Jackson at Chalmette and with 
Zachary Taylor in Mexico. It was not a question of 
politics, it was a question of existence in every sense 
of the word. The white people at length resolved to 
overturn the power of what was called the " carpet- 
bag " government. The result could not be doubtful. 
The negroes as a mass knew nothing about govern- 
ment, the needs of the people or the organization 
necessary to political power. Moreover they cared 
nothing at all for such matters, except as they were 
urged to artificial excitement by designing emis- 
saries of the "carpet-bag" clique in New Orleans 
then under the direction of William Pitt KelloQ:2f. 

On the fourteenth of September, 1874, a com- 
mittee of citizens was sent to the State House to 
demand of Kellogg his resignation ; but he, having 
heard of what was about to happen, had taken 
refuo-e with the Federal grarrison and refused to 
accede to the committee's demand. At once the 



jy THE CIVIL WAR. 28 1 

people flew to arms. Taking possession of tlic public 
buildings, arsenals and weapons of war, they formed 
themselves into a colunin and marched to the levee 
at the foot of Canal Street. Here they fortified 
themselves by barricading the way. It was at this 
point that General Longstreet's Metropolitan 
Guards, expecting an easy victory, assaulted them 
with a great flourish. But the Guards were re- 
pulsed, their cannon captured and turned upon them 
and by this decided action the Kellogg govern- 
ment was ended there and then. This revolt, al- 
though partisan excitement was running high at 
the time all over the United States, was hailed with 
approx'al by every person who felt that by such a 
means intelligence and honesty had cast out fraud 
and debauchery. 

Eleven men were killed on the side of the citizens. 
Six of them bore Creole names ; five of them were 
either German or Anglo-Americans. In sound at 
least, they are representative names. They stand 
for victims who offered themselves up for a sacrifice 
in order' that New Orleans and Louisiana might 
once more be free from alien domination. They 
settled forever the problem of mastership and de- 
clared that the owners of the soil, the possessors 
of intellifjence and the descendants of those who 
hewed Louisiana out of the swamps and forests and 
built her magnificent city are the rightful controllers 



282 IN THE CIVIL WAR. 

of her destiny, and that, come what may, they will 
control it. 

And so once more Louisiana drew herself out of 
the mire and set herself to the task of building her 
fortune anew. The situation was one calling for the 
utmost prudence, caution, reserve and patience. A 
deadly bitterness of feeling had been engendered 
and the least .sudden inflammation of the popular 
temper was likely to bring on the most deplorable 
excesses of race-oppression. 

Unscrupulous adventurers from the North, bent 
upon acquiring money in the name of philanthropy 
and careless as to its cost to the people of Louisiana, 
studiously wrought upon the ignorance and the half- 
savage natures of the freedmen, hoping through 
their votes to get possession of the State treasury 
and of the Federal patronage. 

The white people of Louisiana were resolved that 
this should never be done. > They had, at last, ob- 
tained a firm hold on the reins of public affairs with 
full power to check and finally to terminate the ruin- 
ous waste, fraud and crime that had been the chief 
element of the State government for the past ten 
years. They could not afford to let go this hold 
under any circumstances whatever. On the other 
hand, however, there was a ring of unscrupulous 
politicians to the manner born who stood ready to 
rush to the utmost extreme of cruelty and oppres- 



IN THE CIVIL WAR. 283 

sion in order to insure a lasting control of tlie 
State's finances. It was too much to expect that 
a just equilibrium should be reached at once in 
public affairs, but the best element of the people 
gradually assumed the mastery in New Orleans. 
And this meant the full mastery of the State of 
Louisiana. 

During these years of political excitement, of 
domestic depression and gloom there was, of course, 
very slight progress in the agricultural and commer- 
cial interests of the people ; but the time was at 
hand when the process of adjustment must begin, 
for the world could not longer do without the prod- 
ucts of the great Creole State. Mere partisan 
political considerations must give way before the 
larger and more valuable demands of a civilization 
to which the new force of freedom had given an 
irresistible impulse. 



CHAPTER XII. 



THE PELICAN STATE. 



}opf;^un\. 







\]HE prosperity of Lou- 
isiana, after the four- 
teenth of September, 
1874, depended upon 
the temper of the na- 
tive white people. The 
negroes were harmless 
if left to themselves. 
Although, as a rule, 
idle and shiftless they 
were, when properly treated, inclined to make some 
show of industry. 

Their stumbling block was politics. In this regard 
they were a social problem. Owing to their numbers 
and to the fact that they were all partisans to one 
side (and that side in its local management) they 
were inimical to the interests of the native whites, 
a standing menace to good government and a 
bar to the safety of person and property. If 
the whites had been divided politically, or if the 
negroes had been able to judge intelligently of 

284 



THE PELICAN STATE. 285 

the public needs and to steer clear of unscrup- 
ulous aliens, the difficulty would have been greatly 
softened. In reality it was not so much a question 
of which party should control as it was a question 
of preventing the supremacy of " carpet-bag " ad- 
venturers whose only object was plunder. 

In 1876 the presidential election was a most 
bitter and unscrupulous struggle between the two 
great parties, and it turned out that Louisiana and 
Florida became the centres of partisan attention. 
The parishes of Louisiana, in which the negroes 
greatly outnumbered the whites, were the scenes of 
unprecedented proceedings at the polls, and it was 
claimed by both the parties that fraud had been 
committed. Emmissaries from the North rushed 
to New Orleans. And now a most disgraceful spec- 
tacle was exhibited to the world — the spectacle of a 
soverei2:n State turned over into the hands of a mob 
of wrangling alien partisans, without responsibility 
or scruple, bent upon twisting facts to suit the 
needs of the moment. Florida was in the same 
condition. The outcome of it all was a congres- 
sional commission which by a strictly partisan vote 
declared Mr. Hayes elected as President of the 
United States over Mr. Tilden, by counting the 
two contested States in Mr. Hayes' favor. It was 
too late, however, for the alien adventurers and 
irresponsible tricksters to ever again get possession 



286 THE PELICAN STATE. 

of the government of Louisiana. No illegal tribunal 
was permitted to interfere with the State elections, 
and as soon as this condition was assured agricul- 
ture, commerce, education and social improvement 
began to move in happy lines. 

With a consciousness of self-command came a 
pleasure in self-control and at once the whites and 
the negroes took a step nearer each other. The 
latter were made to feel that their existence de- 
pended upon work, not upon elections ; that their 
happiness rested upon their good behavior and not 
upon the sticcess of some penniless and vicious 
" carpet-bagger " whose inflammatory speeches had 
so long led them astray; that before they could truly 
enjoy freedom they must first learn in the school 
of experience that freedom is not moral exemption 
or political license ; in short, that there is no royal 
road to intelligent citizenship and that before con- 
trol comes the right to control, which cannot be 
conferred by mere proclamation ; that emancipation 
is one thing, but that the right of political domi- 
nation is quite another. 

Since 1874 Louisiana has shown a wonderful 
march of prosperity. Immigration has been rapid 
and steady, lands have advanced in value, crops 
have been enormous and the people, black and 
white, have enjoyed every blessing of industry and 
sood (government. New Orleans, though unable 



I 



THE PELICAN STATE. 287 

to rco-ain the control she once held over the Mis- 
sissippi Valley, has taken great strides toward a 
permanent prosperity. 

Among the planters the great question has been 
that of well-controlled and justly remunerated 
labor. The swarms of former slaves lingering for- 
lornly about their old quarters appealed from the 
first to the sympathy of quondam masters, but the 
question of a fair division of the results of agricul- 
ture under the new order of things was a puzzling 
and vexatious one. It was natural that the negroes 
should be indolent and improvident to a degree, 
and that their suddenly-conferred freedom should 
affect their bearing toward the whites ; but the fact 
that they were subject to the influence of political 
agitators, threatened for a time to become an im- 
passable barrier between themselves and the only 
persons upon earth who were able or willing to 
assist them by furnishing them the means by 
which they could subsist. 

Slowly but surely, however, the two races ar- 
rano-ed themselves in the order of intelligence and 
experience, the whites as the employers, the blacks 
as' the employed. Year by year their relationship 
has become more and more cordial and mutually 
remunerative. The negroes have availed them- 
selves of the new opportunities afforded them 
and in numerous instances have caught from the 



288 THE PELICAN STATE. 

whites the secret of money-making and economy. 
Many of them have grown rich and influential, 
setting a valuable example for their race every- 
where to follow. 

In the winter of 1884-85 an industrial exposition 
was held in New Orleans as a centennial celebra- 
tion of the first exportation of cotton from the 
United States. Congress had passed an act creat- 
ing the corporation and naming it the World's 
Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition ; a 
loan was voted of one million dollars and an addi- 
tional sum of three hundred thousand dollars for 
a National Exhibit. The State of Louisiana and 
the city of New Orleans each appropriated one 
hundred thousand dollars to which was added a 
popular subscription of about five hundred thou- 
sand dollars. In addition to this there were liberal 
donations from counties, towns and cities. 

The Board of Management chosen under the 
provisions of the congressional enactment, pro- 
ceeded to select the grounds and erect the neces- 
sary buildings. These were upon a grand scale 
and of imposing appearance, covering a far larger 
area than any exposition buildings ever before 
constructed. The display was remarkable and the 
result of the exposition was the drawing together 
of the Northern and the Southern people and the 
engendering of a more cordial understanding and 




BY THE OLD C^)UARTERS. 



THE r ELI CAN STATE. 291 

a sinccrer confidence between them. For the first 
time since the beginning of the war, leaders of the 
social life of Boston and of New York found them- 
selves under the roofs of the exclusive and ultra 
Southern homes. Hospitality and cordial welcome 
were offered without reserve, and the swarms of 
Northern visitors were given the freedom of New 
Orleans. Contact in the streets, the hotels, the 
exposition buildings and at the theatres and restau- 
rants did much to rid both Northern and Southern 
minds of baseless prejudices, and to confirm an 
already growing belief that the country was healing 
its ghastly wound, without salve or ligature, by 
spontaneous reunion of the parts so painfully 
severed in the years gone by. 

Meantime the internal improvement of the State, 
both public and private, had progressed rapidly. 
New railroads were built, highways were remodeled, 
the levees perfected in many deficient places and 
new ones constructed. Improved machinery for 
working up the sugar cane and for disposing of 
the cotton and rice products added a great force to 
the planting and manufacturing interests. These 
consequently attracted wide attention and greatly 
stimulated immigration. 

The mouth of the Mississippi River, by the 
building of an extensive system of jetties, was 
greatly improved and the channel made sufficiently 



292 THE PELICAN STATE. 

deep to float over all the bars the largest ocean 
vessels that could ever desire to sail into the har- 
bor of New Orleans. 

Louisiana has excellent schools and colleges and 
at New Orleans a university, which, since the lib- 
eral gift of a noble citizen, is developing rapidly to 
the proportions of a first-class American institution. 
The struggle so persistently kept up between the 
two lansuao^es has ceased to be violent. The 
French tongue is no longer progressive, or, at 
least, its area is not increasing. In New Orleans 
the old French quarter is beginning to show signs 
of change, as if a reaction had at last set in even 
among the Creoles themselves. The Acadian 
country has received a large number of Anglo- 
American immigrants and the whole western and 
northern area of Louisiana bids fair to become one 
of the most prosperous and beautiful regions in 
the South. 

Vast bodies of undrained land, incomparably 
fertile, lie untouched in the southern half of the 
State. Ditching and dyke-building are going for- 
ward year by year ; the great forests of pine, oak 
and cypress are being utilized and are yielding 
rich returns in lumber and spars, in ship-timber 
and shingles. 

The story of Louisiana, no matter how lightly 
sketched, cannot be concluded without giving a 



THE PELICAN STATE. 293 

glimpse of its intellectual development. This must 
be the merest impression, however, drawn from the 
o-roupino- too'ether of a few prominent figures and 

instances. 

Slavery as an institution in America was inimical 
in its very nature, to the growth of art and letters; 
for in order to sustain slavery it became absolutely 
necessary to forbid free thought and free speech. 
To have permitted a free, open, unlimited discussion 
of slavery in the South would have been to incite 
servile insurrection with all its terrible consequences. 
Art, in all its forms, is nothing if not free. The 
spirit of poetry, painting, sculpture, fiction, the 
drama and music, feeds upon life and depends upon 
the deepest suggestions of life for its materials. 
Take from it one large, prominent and picturesque 
element of the human problem before it and it is 
helpless. Criticism and caricature, the merciless 
truth, the high idealization and the temper to bear 
the profoundest probing of the needle of reform 
are absolutely prerequisite to the development of 
genuine art. This temper the South could not 
afford to encourage, for to do so was to introduce 
the acid that would bite at the very base of her 
civilization. 

Louisiana was pre-eminently a slave State ; her 
whole social, domestic, commercial and political 
fabric was founded upon slavery. The servile pop- 



2 94 THE PELICAN STATE. 

ulation greatly outnumbered the whites and the 
danger of revolt was, as we have already seen, 
more than once realized. It was never known how 
small a spark might inflame the tinder of the half- 
slumbering insurgent spirit. Free discussion, free 
criticism, the painting of the dark side of slavery 
and the display of the full glory of freedom were 
of necessity forbidden. The predicament was a 
singular one and little understood by the world. 

It was not that the Southern people were heart- 
less, they were, in the main, crentle and indulo-ent 
masters almost worshiped by their slaves ; but the 
conditions forbade even the slicrhtest ao-itation of 
the subject of freedom or of the abuses of slavery. 
This being so, how could a Southern genius write 
a poem of Southern experience and passion or a 
novel of Southern life ? Only one side of the sub- 
ject was open to him. He dared not approach the 
other. Social ostracism, or something even worse, 
awaited him if he chose to depict a view of the 
obverse side of the medal, because such a view 
was in fact absolutely incendiary and would tend 
to produce the most horrible consequences. 

At the North this phase of the matter did not 
make itself felt. The zealous abolitionist, bent 
upon securing the freedom of the slaves, was blind 
to the effect that his efforts were certain to produce 
upon the whites. When the white Southerner said 



THE PELICAN STATE. 295 

firmly: "You must not and shall not scatter the 
fire of revolt amongst our slaves," the emissary of 
freedom could not see that it was the instinct of 
self-preservation that made the Southerner's de- 
claration far stronger than any desire to be arbi- 
trary and wrong-headed could have done. 

Much of what came to be known as Southern 
arrogance was merely a hard name by which to 
designate the impatience generated by a sense of 
constantly-impending danger to the whole social, 
political, commercial and domestic tissue of the 
slave area. Under such circumstances art could 
not and did not exist as an appreciable element of 
life. The artist cannot be a cutter and trimmer, a 
dodger of issues, a suppresser of truth, an ignorer 
of facts, a prejudiced and handicaped observer. 
To him every subject must be open for exhaustive 
discussion; every phase of life must be free to his 
investio-ations, subject to his merciless analyses and 
to his lofty idealizations. 

This could not be in the South. Slavery forbade 
it. The Southern genius must either paint slavery 
to suit the taste of masters or he must not paint 
it at all. This was not arrogance, it was the most 
pressing demand of necessity; it was the only course 
compatible with safety so long as slavery existed ; 
any other course would have led to revolt and to 
all the unspeakable horrors of servile insurrection. 



296 THE PELICAN STATE. 

Necessarily, then, the creative energy of the South- 
ern mind was in a large degree shut out from the 
Eden of poetry, fiction, painting and sculpture. Not 
wholly shut out, however, for there were brilliant 
poets, notable novelists and some painters and 
sculptors in the Old South. The talent of the 
slave area turned chiefly to oratory in one form or 
another; a race of politicians sprang up with 
power to control the councils of the nation. 

Slender, however, as the currents may have 
been, Louisiana was not without her art and her 
literature, running apace with the progress of her 
agricultural, commercial and political prosperity. 
The Creoles of New Orleans, many of them as we 
have seen, educated in France, were the first to 
address themselves to literature. Lepouse, St. 
Ceran, Allard and Audubon are names closely con- 
nected with the French civilization in Louisiana. 
Canonge, Delery, Dufour, Dugue, Delpit, Mercier 
and the brothers Rouquette are notable examples 
of Creole genius in letters. Charles Gayarre has 
written a monumental history of the Foreign 
Domination in Louisiana. His fugitive romantic 
sketches and his descriptive papers touch the 
legends, traditions and folk-lore of the Louisiana 
colonies. Judge Martin, also, has written a volu- 
minous History of Louisiana from its discovery 
up to 1816, with some additions of a later date. 



THE PELICAN STATE. 299 

Not till after the close of the great war, however, 
was there any remarkable advance in the matter of 
literature in the Southern States. Louisiana had 
been the tvpical slave State ; but she was one of the 
first States of the South to feel the reaction from 
the intellectual stupor or reserve induced by her 
peculiar auic bcllufu circumstances. Within the 
first twenty years of freedom she has given to the 
world literary work the purpose and the art of 
which are of the best. George W. Cable, Miss 
Kine, Mrs. Davis, Lafcadio Hearn and many 
others have emphasized the value of perfect liberty. 
The pendulum once released may have swung 
rather far to the other extreme in one or two bril- 
liant instances, but the gain, even if this is so, has 
been priceless. 

It would be delightful if it were possible to pro- 
ject the story of Louisiana into the future. Stand- 
ing here, now, with the impression of the past 
sharply set in our memory, what if we could look 
forward over the next century of life in the low- 
country of the Mississippi Valley ! 

We have seen De Soto wander blindly to the 
banks of the great river and die ; we have watched 
the struQfeles of De Bienville, the heroism of the 
men who followed him, the dashing valor of Gal- 
vez, the cruel perfidy of O'Reilly and the fatherly 
kindness of Carondelet. We have seen Louisiana 



300 THE PELICAN STATE. 

grow from a little colony of adventurers into a 
mio-hty and prosperous State. We have noted the 
crrowth of o-reat industries. We have watched the 
development of New Orleans from a cluster of 
huts in a swamp to one of the great cities of 
the world. We have fought with Jackson, we 
have seen the victory of Farragut, we have wit- 
nessed the rise and fall of slavery ; now we stand 
on the brink of the future. What do we see } 

If we may judge by the past the way lies onward 
and upward. Not even the destructive influences 
of the recent war could permanently check the 
progress of Louisiana. To-day, with her popula- 
tion of twelve hundred thousand freemen, confi- 
dently facing the future, the Pelican State is 
o-reater and happier than ever before. Who shall 
say that her race is to be ended soon — that she 
is not to round any goal of the future ? 

It is well to read the history of one's country if 
for nothino: more than to catch from it a new con- 
sciousness of the value of steadfast patriotism. 
To-day Louisiana is as true to the American flag 
and as loyal to the American meaning of freedom 
as any State in the Federal Union. The fierce 
and terrible fight that she made for the " Lost 
Cause" and the defeat and humiliation which fol- 
lowed could not drive from the hearts of her sons 
that love of liberty, that fealty to the spirit of our 



thp: pelican state. 301 

constitution which after all must be the bed-rock 
of American patriotism. 

Loyalty to one's State and a belief in its best 
possibilities are proof at once of the value and the 
strength of citizenship. But higher than sectional 
loyalty is love of country ; broader than belief in 
the neighborhood's future is faith in the nation's 
development. As individual factors in the upbuild- 
ing of the American Union the dweller in Maine 
and the citizen of Oregon should find both interest 
and pride in the growth of Texas and the Caro- 
linas. It is for the American wherever his home 
and whatever his occupation that the Story of 
Louisiana has here been told. 

It is the privilege of the politician to drag up 
the dark scenes of the past for partisan purposes, 
but it is the duty of all good and true citizens to 
encourage that patriotism which sees only the 
w-elfare of the whole country. 



THE STORY OF LOUISIANA 



TOLD IN CHRONOLOGICAL EPITOME. 



The historical happenings of Louisiana are many ; they date back to the 
days of the early discoverers. Even to one who traces the dry chronological 
record the adventure, the romance and the daring that mark the beginnings 
of the Pelican State are at once apparent. And yet, could we but fathom 
its mysteries, the antiquity of Louisiana is fully as eloquent in the unwritten 
history of its prehistoric days as is its checkered and eventful history so 
forcibly outlined by the dates that have been secured to us. 



THE ERA OF BEGINNINGS. 

How great is this antiquity no one may truthfully say. The much-discussed 
skull unearthed some years since beneath the decaying remains of four suc- 
cessive layers of gigantic cypress forests tells of the existence of man in 
Louisiana thousands of years ago. The age of this skull has been variously 
estimated at from fourteen thousand four hundred to fifty-seven thousand 
years. In the loamy deposits of the Mississippi near Natchez human 
remains have been discovered lying side by side with those of mylodon and 
megalony.v — creatures of a far-off prehistoric existence. All along the 
Mississippi are other indications of the human inhabitants of Louisiana — 
of men and women who hunted over its plains in the age of the mastodon 
and even amid the great convulsions. Within the limits of Louisiana have 
been found those peculiar shell heaps or "kitchen middens" that tell of a 
progressive stage of man from brutality to barbarism, while the elevated 
"garden beds" discovered in the State prove it to have been one of the 
agricultural centers of the semi-civilized Mound-Builders. 

The story of the Indian occupation of the State could it be satisfactorily 
told would also be found of absorbing interest. The most advanced of all 
the Southern tribes, the fire-worshiping Natchez, occupied the greater part 
of the State though portions of it were also under the domination of certain of 
the confederated tribes of the Creek nation. These courteous though war- 
like peoples (the Natchez) held control of the lands about the mouth of the 
Mississippi until the strong arm of the white man swept them all away. 

303 



304 ERA OF DISCOVERY. 



THE ERA OF DISCOVERY. 



At precisely what date the first white discoverer coasted the low Gulf lands 
of Louisiana or saw the many mouths of its giant river has not been deter- 
mined. As earlyas isioattempts had been made bythe .Spanish conquerors 
of the West Indies to explore and subdue the countries north of the Mexi- 
can gulf. Nothing definite, however, is recorded until the alleged discovery 
of the mouth of the Mississippi (or as then called Rio del Espiritu Santo) by 
Alonzo de Pineda in 15 19. Cabeza de Vaca, lost and wandering after the 
wreck of Narvaez' ill-starred expedition to Florida, came, probably first of all 
Europeans, to the banks of the mighty river, on the thirtieth of October, 1528, 
when he crossed one of its broad mouths. With the visit, in 1540, of 
De Soto the unlucky, the real record of discovery begins : 

1540. De Soto crosses the Mississippi at Chickasaw Bluff — May 26. 

1673. Joliet and Marquette reach the Mississippi from Canada— June 17. 

1682. La Salle descends the Mississippi to its mouth — April 6. La 
Salle names the surrounding country Louisiana and takes possession in 
behalf of the King of France — April 9. La Salle returns to Canada and 
announces his discovery. La Salle sails for France — October. 

1684. La Salle sets out for the mouth of the Mississippi — July 4. 

1687. La Salle murdered by his men in Texas — March 19. 

1698. A squadron sent out to Gulf of Mexico under D'Iberville — 
October 24. 

1699. D'Iberville enters the Mississippi — March i. Establishes a set- 
tlement at Bay of Biloxi — May i. D'Iberville sails for France leaving 
Sauvolle in command — May 3. Bienville encounters an English ship in 
the mouth of the Mississippi — September 15. D'Iberville returns from 
France — December 7. Sauvolle appointed Governor— December 7. 

1700. D'Iberville establishes a fort on the Mississippi —January. 
D'Iberville ascends the Mississippi to conciliate the Indians — February. 
D'Iberville returns to France — May. 

1701. Death of Sauvolle. Bienville succeeds to the command. Settle- 
ment established at Dauphine Island. Assistance sent to the Spaniards at 
St. Augustine. 

1704. Detachment of French soldiers cut off by Indians. Arrival of 
supplies from France. Expedition by Bienville against the Alibamos. 
Arrival of soldiers, girls and supplies — July. 

1707. Bienville relieves Pensacola, besieged by Indians and English. 

1708. De Muys appointed Governor-General of Louisiana. Diron 
d'Artaguette sent out from France to investigate the management of colony. 
Death of De Muys on passage to Louisiana. Depredations committed by a 
privateer from Jamaica — September. 

1709. Settlement at Mobile transferred to a point higher up the river. 
Arrival of a frigate with provisions from France — September. 

171 1. Return of D'Artaguette to France to report progress. 

1712. Grant of the King to Sieur Antony Crozat of exclusive trading 



ERA OF FRENCH COLOXIZA TION. S^S 



rights for ten years throughout Louisiana subject to government of New 
France — September 14. Four hundred persons in the colony. Legal govern- 
ment established — December 18. 

1713. Arrival of Cadillac as Governor — May 17. Arrival of ship La 
Louisiane with provisions and passengers. Trading house established at 
Natchez. 

1714. Alliance with the Choctaws renewed by Bienville. 

1715. Bienville makes peace among the Choctaws. Garrison re-enforced 
by two companies of infantry. Bienville appointed Commander-General. 
Death of Louis XIV. — September i. Cadillac goes silver-hunting in the 
Illinois country. 

1716. Attack of the Natchez on French. Bienville seizes and imprisons 
Natchez chiefs. Fort Rosalie constructed on the territory of the Natchez. 
Arrival of St. Denys at Mobile, from Mexico. 

1717. Arrival of L'Epinay, as Governor, from France — March 9. Sur- 
render of privileges by Crozat— August 23. Illinois country incorporated 
with Louisiana- September. Company of the West chartered— Septem- 
ber 6. Law's Banque Royal established in France — December. 

1718. Company's ships arrive. Bienville appointed Governor — Febru- 
ary 9. Foundations of New Orleans laid — February. Chateauguay sent 
with fifty men to take possession of Bay of St. Joseph. Bienville lays out 
New Orleans. Large grants of land made to distinguished Frenchmen. 

1719. L'Archambault arrives at Mobile with one hundred passengers. 
France declares War against Spain. Arrival of Serigny and thirty passen- 
gers—April 29. Expedition against Pensacola. Great popularity in 
France of Law's Mississippi scheme. 

1720. Settlement of New Bilo.xi. Arrival of a fleet commanded by Lau- 
geon bringing 582 passengers. Transportation of vagabonds and convicts 
forbidden by King. Arrival of two line of battle ships from Toulon — June. 
Five hundred negroes arrive in Company's ships. Arrival of large numbers 
of settlers. 

ERA OF FRENCH COLONIZATION. 

1721. Arrival of three hundred settlers and eighty girls — January 3. 
Two hundred German settlers and five hundred negroes arrive. Arrival of 
two hundred and fifty passengers — June 4- Arrival of Duvergier as Direc- 
tor and La Harpe — July 15. Arrival of three hundred negroes — August 
15. Departure of La Harpe for the Bay of St. Bernard — August 26. 
Pauger prepares a plan for the proposed city of New Orleans. 

1722. Appointment of Loubois as Commander of Fort St. Louis. Set- 
tlement of Germans established around New Orleans. Erection of Battery 
with garrison on the Island of the Balize. New Orleans made the prin- 
cipal establishment of the colony— May. Return of La Harpe from River 
Arkansas — May 20. Peace established between France and Spain. Re- 
moval of Bienville to New Orleans — August. Arrival of Boismont and 
Capuchin monks. Failure of Law's Bank. 



3o6 ERA OF FRENCH COLONIZATION. 



1723. Value of silver dollar in Colony increased by law — January 12. 

1725. Black code promulgated for the punishment of slaves. Edict pub- 
lished prohibiting interception of letters. Edict published putting to death 
any person killing or wounding another's cattle — May 26. Arrival of 
Lachaise and Perrault, commissioners ordere'd to report condition of affairs 
in Province. 

1726. Establishment of the Jesuits confirmed — February 20. Establish- 
ment of the Capuchins confirmed. Ursuline Nuns invited to Louisiana. 
Arrival of Perier as Commander-General of Louisiana. Recall of Bienville 
to France. 

1727. Arrival of Jesuits and Ursuline Nuns. Erection of a nunnery. 
Erection of a Government House. Ditch dug in Bourbon street. Arrival 
of girls intended as wives for the Colonists — " Filles a la Cassette." Cul- 
ture of indigo begun ; also of figs and oranges. 

1728. Publication of edict regarding distribution of lands — August 10. 

1729. Conspiracy of the Chickasaws against the French. The com- 
mandant of Fort Rosalie quarrels with the Natchez. Massacre at Fort 
Rosalie of all its occupants by the Natchez — November. Murder of Father 
Soulet. Massacre at Fort St. Peter of its garrison. 

1730. Defeat of the Natchez — February 26. Arrival at the Balize of 
troops under Perrier de Salvert — August 10. Execution of leading negroes 
for insurrection. E.xpedition of Perrier against the Natchez — November. 

1731. Perrier defeats the Natchez — January. Seizure of the Great 
Sun of the Natchez. Four hundred and twenty-seven prisoners captured. 

1732. Company of the West surrenders its charter and privileges to king 
— April 10. Salmon appointed King's Commissioner. Natchez attack St. 
Denis and the Nachitoches and are repulsed. Severe defeat of the Natchez 
by St. Denis. Conspiracy of the negroes. Ringleaders seized and hung. 

1733. Reappointment of Bienville. Settlements at Manchac, Baton 
Rouge and Point Coupee. 

1736. Predatory attacks by the Chickasaws. Defeat and murder of 
D'Artaguette by Chickasaws. Expedition made against the Chickasaws by 
Bienville. Defeat and repulse of Bienville — May 26. 

1740. Return of Bienville. His second expedition against the Chicka- 
saws. Chickasaws sue for peace. Count de la Galissoniere, Governor- 
General of New France. 

1743. Marquis de Vaudreuil appointed Governor of Louisiana — May 10. 
Bienville returns to France. 

1751. King exempts all the imports and exports of Louisiana from duty 
for ten years. 

1752. Arrival of two hundred recruits from France. Arrival of sixty 
poor girls from France — April 17. Macarty takes command of Fort 
Chartres in the Illinois — August 20. 

1753- Corruptions among the Chickasaws. Marquis de Vaudreuil 
marches against the Chickasaws. Fort of Tombeckbee enlarged and garri- 
soned. 



KRA OF SPAXISII OCCUPATIO.V. 307 



1754. Kerlerec succeeds the Marquis de Vaudieuil as Governor. Vau- 
dreuil appointed Governor of New France. Defeat of French by Washing- 
ton — April. French under Viliiers capture Fort Necessity — July 4. Mur- 
der of Roux by the soldiers of the garrison of Cat Island. Favrot marches 
to the Illinois with two hundred men. 

1755. Transportation of Acadian settlers by British. Arrival of Aca- 
dians at New Orleans. Braddock's defeat — July 9. England declares war 
against France. 

1757. Death of Auberville; succeeded as Commissary Ordonnateur by 
Bobe Descloseaux. 

1758. Evacuation of Fort Du Quesne by the French. Arrival of its gar- 
rison at New Orleans. Erection of Sugar Mill in New Orleans. 

1759. Arrival of Rochemore as Commissary (Jrdonnateur. Quarrel be- 
tween Kerlerec and Rochemore. 

1762. A secret treaty signed at Paris giving Louisiana to Spain — Nov- 
ember 3. 

1763. Peace between England, Spain and France — February 16. Ker- 
lerec recalled. Succeeded by D'Abadie as Director-General. 

1764. English troops take possession of Baton Rouge and other posts in 
"West Florida" — February. Skirmish between Major Loftus and the 
Indians — March 20. D'Abadie receives official announcement of the ces- 
sion of Louisiana to Spain — October. 

1765. General Council called to consider the matter. Jean Milhet sent 
to France with a petition begging that Louisiana might not be severed from 
the mother country. District of Feliciana settled by British residents. British 
take possession of the Post of the Illinois and drive out St. Ange, the com- 
mandant. St. Ange and his followers cross the Mississippi and found St. 
Louis and St. Genevieve. Destrehan and other planters erect sugar mills. 
A ship laden with sugar sent to France. Milhet fails to accomplish his 
mission. British establish a post at Bayou Manchac. D'Abadie dies. 
Aubry succeeds him. 

1766. Letter received from Don Antonio de Ulloa announcing his inten- 
tion of taking possession of Louisiana. Ulloa lands at New Orleans. He 
declines to show his powers or take formal possession. Census of the 
province shows population of 10,000. Province visited by yellow fever. 

1767. Ulloa receives additional troops from Havana. He orders three 
forts built on the Mississippi. Return of Jean Milhet from France. 

1768. Council order Ulloa to produce some certificate of his powers 
or else leave the province. Ulloa leaves Louisiana. General meeting of 
deputies convened at St. Orleans. A second petition sent by St. Lette and 
I>essassier. 

THE ERA OF SPANISH OCCUPATION. 

1769. Failure of the petition. Deputies obtain from King of France a 
reduction of the paper currency — March 23. Intelligence received at New 
Orleans of the arrival of a Spanish frigate — July 23. Express sent to 



3o8 ERA OF SPANISH OCCUPATION: 



Aul)ry from Don Alexander O'Reilly, commander of the Spanish forces. 
Inhabitants send deputation to O'Reilly asking two years to remove their 
effects from the town. Arrival of O'Reilly with his armament. Aubry re- 
ceives him and surrenders possession — August i8. O'Reilly orders a cen- 
sus of New Orleans (3,190). O'Reilly arrests Focault, Noyan Bienville, 
Boisblanc, Lafreniere and Brand — August 31. O'Reilly arrests Marquis, 
Doucet, Petit, Mazent, the two Milhets, Caresse and Poupet. O'Reilly arrests 
Villere. Villere slain by the soldiers. O'Reilly condemns Noyan Bienville, 
Lafreniere, Marquis, Joseph Milhet and Caresse. The condemned shot — 
September, 28. Boisblanc, Doucet, Mazent, John Milhet, Petit and Poupet 
transported to Havana and thrown into prison. O'Reilly abolishes by proc- 
lamation the Superior Council and substitutes a cabildo composed of six 
perpetual regidors, two ordinary alcades, an Attorney-General-Syndic, over 
which the governor presides. Regiment raised in the province. Dearth of 
provisions. Arrival of Oliver Pollock's brig from Baltimore bringing pro- 
visions. Don Luis de Unzaga assumes the position of governor. Unzaga 
publishes a code of civil and criminal legislation. 

1770. O'Reilly publishes a set of regulations in regard to grants of land 
— February 8. Tax imposed on taverns, boarding-houses, brandy, etc., to 
give a revenue to the city of New Orleans — February 22. Certain piece 
of land granted to the city as public square. Black code re-enacted. Law 
passed prohibiting purchasing articles from persons navigating the Missi.s- 
sippL O'Reilly with all his troops except twelve hundred departs. Don 
Antonio Maria Buccarelly appointed Captain-General of Louisiana. 

1771. Permission granted for admission of two vessels every year 
from France. Merchants of New Orleans complain of the arbitrary 
restrictions on trade. 

1772. Arrival of Colonel Estacheria to take command of the Louisi- 
ana regiment. Country desolated by a terrific hurricane — August 31. 

1775. Unzaga promises amnesty to runaway slaves if they return to their 
masters. Battle of Lexington — April 19. 

1777. Don Bernado de Galvez begins as Governor — January i. Don 
Diego Joseph Navarro appointed Captain-General of Cuba and Louisiana. 
Oliver Pollock of Baltimore appointed United States commercial agent at 
New Orleans. 

1778. Galvez affords aid of ammunition to the Americans — January. 
France concludes a treaty with the United States — February 6. 

1779. Eighty-seven United States citizens take temporary oath of fidelity 
to the king of Spain. Arrival of a number of families from Malaga. Set- 
tlement formed by them on Bayou Teche called New Iberia. Arrival of six 
Capuchin friars. Visitation of the small-pox in New Orleans. England 
declares v/ar against France. Spain declares war against England — May 8. 
Galvez commissioned Governor and Intendant. Galvez organizes a small 
army. Galvez captures Fort Bute on Bayou Manchac — September 7. 
Galvez captures Baton Rouge and five hundred British soldiers — Septem- 
ber 21. Surrender of Fort Panmure at Natchez. Galvez returns to New 



ERA OF srAiV/SII OCCUPATION. 309 



Orleans, leaving Don Carlos de Grandprc at F.aton Rouge. Congress sends 
a minister to Madrid to negotiate a treaty. 

1780. Galvez commissioned Brigadier-General. Galvez undertakes an 
expedition against Fort Charlotte on the Mobile River. Fort Charlotte 
capitulates— March 14. British attack St. Louis. Clark relieves St. Louis. 
Spain refuses to acknowledge the Independence of the United States. 

1781. Galvez sets out against Pensacola — February 28. Galvez arrives 
at Pensacola and invests it. Pensacola capitulates — May 9. Span- 
iards evacuate Fort Panmure — April 29. Louisiana desolated by a hurri- 
cane August 24. Galvez commissioned Lieutenant-General and Captain- 
General of Louisiana and Florida. Father Cyrillo made Bishop of Louisiana. 
Galvez sails for San Domingo to superintend attack on the Bahama Islands. 
Don Estevan Miro provisionally takes possession of government. 

1782. Considerable commercial privileges granted to the Province. 

1783. Treaty of peace between Great Britian, United States and 
Spain, signed at Paris — September 3. Treaty conferred to Spain all the 
Floridas south of Latitude 31. 

1785. Hospital for lepers erected. Census taken by order of Galvez 
(Lower Louisiana 28,047; West Florida 3,477; Upper Louisiana 1,491). 
Arrival of Acadian families. 

1786. Don Estevan Miro receives the commission of Governor. Miro 
issues his proclamation — June 2. 

1787. New Orleans sends a company of infantry to build and garrison 
a fort near New Madrid. Arrival of General Wilkinson at New Orleans 
with goods. Wilkinson has an interview with Miro and returns to Phila- 
delphia — September. 

1788. Tremendous conflagration ; nine hundred houses burned — 
March 21. A contract made with the United States for flour to relieve 
the distress and permission given contractors to import merchandise. 
Permission granted Wilkinson's agent to send to New Orleans from Ken- 
tucky launches loaded with tobacco. Census taken (42,611). 

1789. Arrival of Wilkinson in New Orleans. Arrival of settlers from 
western part of the United States to settle near Natchez and Feliciana. 

1790. Treaty of peace with the Creeks — August 7. Southwestern 
territory formed ; Wm. Blount governor. 

1791.' Massacre of French in San Domingo — August 23. Arrival of 
French refugees from San Domingo. Schools and theatre opened by 
refugees. Departure of Miro. 

1792. Arrival of Don Francisco Louis Hector, Baron de Carondelet as 
governor and intendant of Louisiana — January. Don Nicholas Maria Vidal. 
appointed Lieutenant-Governor. Proclamation of Carondelet — Janu- 
ary 22. Carondelet issues a proclamation in regard to the treatment of 
slaves— July 11. Carondelet prohibits the introduction of negroes from 
French and British islands. Population of New Orleans 6000. Philadel- 
phia merchants establish branch houses in New Orleans. 

1793. The King issues a proclamation, encouraging the slave trade. 



3IO ERA OF SPANISH OCCUPATION: 



Death of Louis XVI. on the scaffold. Spain declares war against France — 
January 21. Carondelet prohibits the playing of Revolutionary airs at the 
theatres. Arrest of six upholders of French principles. Carondelet re-builds 
the fortifications around the city. 

1794. Don Francisco de Rendon appointed intendant. Don Louis de 
Penalvert appointed Bishop of I>ouisiana and Florida. Genet, the French 
ambassador to the United States, plans an expedition against the Spanish 
dominions. Genet gains recruits in the bordering States. Carondelet com- 
pletes the fortifications of New Orleans. Publication of the first newspaper 
— Le Moniteur de la Louisiane. Beginning of a canal drawing off stag- 
nant waters from New Orleans. 

1795. Carondelet sends Don Manuel Gayoso de Lemos to New Madrid 
to detach Ohio from the United States. Intended insurrection of the 
slaves discovered. Slaves resist. Twenty-five killed. Twenty-five more 
hung. United States and Spain conclude a treaty — October 27. 

1796. Cabildo petition the King to prohibit the introduction of slaves. 
Business of growing sugar cane has a new lease of life. Completion of the 
" Canal Carondelet." Grants of land made to French loyalists. Tax im- 
posed on bread and meat and wheat to light and provide watchmen for the 
city. Spain declares war against England — October 7. 

1797. Cabildo increased by six additional regidors. Don Manuel Gayoso 
de Lemos appointed Spanish Commissioner to meet United States Commis- 
sioner. Andrew Ellicot appointed United States Commissioner. Caron- 
delet refuses to surrender the Posts on the Mississippi. Expedition sent 
to detach the Western Country from the United States. Commotion at 
Natchez — June. Gayoso issues a proclamation commanding the people 
to return to their allegiance. Meeting of the people of the district. Com- 
mittee sent to Gayoso demanding they should be left unmolested. Gayoso 
grants the request. Yellow fever in New Orleans. Departure of Baron de 
Carondelet. Don Manuel Gayoso de Lemos succeeded as Governor. 

1798. Gayoso issues his proclamation — January. Fort Paumure evac- 
uated by the British — March 23. Fort at the Walnut Hills evacuated — 
March 29. Mississippi territory erected — April 7. Winthrop Sargent ap- 
pointed Governor of the territory. Royal Schedule gives the intendant the 
right of granting lands belonging to the crown — October 21. 

1799. Don Joseph Vidal Commandant of Concordia makes an arrange- 
ment with Governor of Mississippi territory for reciprocal interchange of 
slaves — April 30. Morales refuses to allow a place of deposit to United 
States citizens in New Orleans. Gayoso and Wilkinson enter into a pro- 
visional agreement for mutual surrender of deserters in respective armies. 
New Madrid annexed to Upper Louisiana. Death of Gayoso — July 18. 
The Marquis of Casa-Calvo military Governor. Don Ramon de Lopez 
y'Angullo arrives at New Orleans as Intendant of Louisiana and West 
Florida. 

1800. Existing prohibition of the introduction of slaves suspended. 
Spain promises to surrender Louisiana to France — October i. 



ERA OF FORMATION. 311 



1801. Right of Deposit in New Orleans restored to citizens of United 
.States. Cession of Louisiana to France effected — Marcli 21. Napoleon 
appoints General Victor Captain-General. ]?y Royal Schedule, King ap- 
proves Carondelet's proposition for draining the city — May 10. Thomas 
Jefferson, President of the United States. Treaty ratified between the 
United States and France — June i. Arrival of Don Juan Manuel de 
Salcedo as Governor of Louisiana and West Florida — June. Departure 
of Marquis de Casa Calvo for Havana. Daniel Clarke appointed United 
States Consul in New Orleans. Treaty concluded between Chickasaws and 
United States — October 24. Treaty concluded between Choctaws and 
United States — December 17. 

1802. Peace of Amiens — March 25. King forbids by Royal Schedule 
the grant of any land in Louisiana to any citizen in the United States — 
July iS. Citizens refused the right of deposit in New Orleans and impor- 
tation of goods prohibited in American bottoms. Departure of Lopez for 
France. Death of Lopez on the voyage. 

1803. Morales issues a proclamation permitting importation of flour and 
provisions from United States. King orders that the United States should 
enjoy their right of deposit in New Orleans — March i. Act of Congress, 
providing the granting of licenses at the custom-house of Fort Adams. 
Arrival of Laussat, the Colonial prefect, at New Orleans. Laussat issues 
a proclamation. Address presented to him by merchants and planters. 
Arrival of the Marquis de Casa-Calvo from Havana — April 10. The United 
States purchase Louisiana from France (for sixty million francs), by treaty 
signed April 30. Casa-Calvo issues a proclamation surrendering Louis- 
iana to Spain — May 18. King of Spain protests against the sale of 
Louisiana. Departure of Spanish nuns for Havana. Claiborne and Wil- 
kinson appointed United States' Commissioners for receiving Louisiana from 
France. Surrender of the keys of New Orleans to France by Spanish otificers 
— Nov. 30. Laussat issues a proclamation announcing the sale of Louis- 
iana to the United States. Laussat issues proclamations m regard to 
government of the province. Arrival of United States troops under Clai- 
borne and Wilkinson — December 20. Formal surrender of Louisiana by 
Laussat to the United States — December 20. Claiborne issues a procla- 
mation as Governor-General and Intendant of the province — December 20. 
Claiborne establishes a court of pleas composed of seven judges — Decem- 
ber 30. Convention between United States and Spain ratified. 

THE ERA OF FORMATION. 

1804. Louisiana divided into the territories of Orleans and District of 
Louisiana by Act of Congress — March 26. New form of government goes 
into operation with Claiborne as Governor, Prevost as Judge of the Superior 
Court, Hall as District Judge of the United States and Dickenson, District 
Attorney — October. Territory divided into twelve counties with an in- 
ferior Court with one Judge — December. New Orleans chartered a city. 
Committee appointed to prepare a civil and criminal code. Office of dis- 



312 ERA OF FORMATION. 



count and deposit established by the bank of the United States in New 
Orleans. 

1805. Act passed by Congress establishing a government in Louisiana 
similar to that of the Mississippi territory except in regard to estates of peo- 
ple dying intestate and the prohibition of slavery — March 2. Act passed 
confirming inchoate titles and grants to land. Provision made by the Legis- 
lative Council for relief of insolvent debtors and improvement of land navi- 
gation — June. Court of probates established. Treaty with Cherokee 
Indians in regard to United States mail — October 7. Treaty with Creek 
Indians in regard to United States road. Spanish governor of Texas 
assumes a threatening attitude. 

1806. Meeting of the first territorial Legislature — January 25. Act 
passed regulating the care of slaves. Act passed establishing schools in 
the several counties and for improvement of the navigation of the Canal. 
Colonel Cushing marches to Natchitoches with four companies. Wilkinson 
arrives at Natchitoches. Porter sent to New Orleans. Reports of Burr's 
conspiracy. Wilkinson arrives at New Orleans. Meeting of merchants at 
New Orleans — December 9. Burr's plans exposed. Sum raised to pay 
expenses of sailors needed in the United States service. Bollman, the 
abettor of Burr, arrested. Arrest of Ogden and Swartwout by order of 
Wilkinson. Release of Bollman on writ of habeas corpus. Workman 
addresses an official Communication to Claiborne. 

1807. Meeting of Legislature — January 12. Arrest of General Adair by 
Wilkinson's connivance. Arrest of Workman/Kerr and Bradford. Release 
of Workman and Kerr on writ of habeas corpus. Arrest of Burr. Legislature 
passes an act abolishing County Courts. Legislature passes an act fixing 
the members of the house of representatives at twenty-five. Pike, while 
seeking for the source of the Red River, arrested by Spaniards. Pike's 
papers seized and retained; he is released. A court of inquiry into Wilkin- 
son's conduct held. 

1808. Meeting of the Second Territorial Legislature — January 8. Leg- 
islature passes an act establishing the civil and criminal code. Act passed 
establishing a school in every parish. Court of inquiry reported in favor of 
Wilkinson. England assumes a threatening attitude. Wilkinson ordered 
to assemble troops at New Orleans. 

1809. Congress passes an act appropriating twenty-five thousand dollars 
to extend the canal Carondelet to Mississippi, if advisable — February 9. 
Madison President. Wilkinson arrives in New Orleans. Ordered to Fort 
Adams. Recalled and his place supplied by Wade Hampton. 

i8io. Legislature appropriates twenty thousand dollars to the establish- 
ment of a college. United States citizens drive out the garrison at Fort 
Baton Rouge. Meeting of a convention at St. Francisville. A constitu- 
tion framed and Fulwar Skepwith appointed governor. President issues a 
proclamation claiming the disputed territory for the United States — Octo- 
ber 16. Claiborne takes possession of the disputed territory. Committees 
of Congress investigate Wilkinson's conduct. 



ERA OF I-OKMATIO.V. 313 



181 1. Revolt of slaves in the parish of St. John the Iniptist. Revolt 
put down; sixty-six slaves killed. Two new judicial districts erected by 
legislature. Town of Vidalia established. Charters granted to the Planter's 
Bank and the liank of (Orleans. Exclusive privileges granted to Livingston 
and Fulton to build boats employing steam for eighteen years. Congress 
passes an act enabling the people of the territory to form a State govern- 
ment — February 11. Court-martial ordered for the trial of Wilkinson. 
Convention to adopt a State Constitution meets at New Orleans — Novem- 
ber I. Court-Martial acquits Wilkinson — December 23. 

1812. Arrival at New Orleans from Pittsburg of the New Orleans, the 
first vessel propelled by steam — January 10. State constitution adopted 
and signed by members of the convention — January 22. Act passed by 
Congress for the admission of Louisiana as State — April. Same act declared 
all waters of said State free to all United States' citizens and not taxable. 
Congress passes an act extending limits of the State. Wilkinson directed 
to return to New Orleans and resume command — April 12. Arrival of 
Wilkinson in New Orleans — June 8. Congress declares war on P:ngland 

June 18. First session of State Legislature — June 27. Claiborne elected 

governor. Country devastated by a hurricane— August 19. Second ses- 
sion of the Legislature — November 23. Supreme district and parish courts 
organized. 

1813. Congress orders the President to occupy that part of West Florida 
west of the River Perdito — February 12. Wilkinson seizes Fort Charlotte 

— April 13. Massacre at Fort Minis by Creek Indians — September 13. 
Defeat of the Creeks at the Tallusatche towns — November 3. Defeat of 
the Creeks at Talledega by Jackson. Defeat of the Creeks at Autosse and 
Tallahassee. 

1814. Defeat of the Creeks by Jackson — March 27. Peace made with 
Creeks — August 9. Arrival of Colonel Nichols at Pensacola. He issues 
a proclamation trying to stir the people of Louisiana to revolt — August 29. 
Repulse of Perry at Fort Boyer. Jackson drives the British from Pensa- 
cola — November 7. Jackson arrives in New Orleans — December 2. 
British threaten New Orleans. Gunboats under Lieutenant Jones captured 

— December 14. Jackson issues a general order putting the city under 
martial law. Legislature grants an amnesty to the pirate Lafitte and those 
of his followers who enlisted to serve during the war. 

1815. Battle of New Orleans. Defeat of the British — January 8. 
Legislature appropriates two thousand dollars. News received of the treaty 
of Ghent, signed December 24 — February 13. Jackson orders all French 
subjects possessing certificates of discharge to retire into the interior — 
February 28. Jackson has Louallier arrested on the ground of his being a 
spy — March 5. Hall grants a writ of habeas corpus in favor of Louallier. 
Hall arrested as aiding and abetting mutiny. Hollander arrested. Hollan- 
der discharged. Court-Martial sustain Louallier — March 9. Jackson re- 
leases Hall — March 11. News of peace confirmed; Louallier released — 
March 13. Jackson fined one thousand dollars for his hij^h-handed methods. 



314 ERA OF DEVELOPMENT. 



1816. Villere elected governor — December. 

1817. Ex-Governor Claiborne elected United States Senator — January. 
Branch of the Bank of the United States established in New Orleans 
Death of Claiborne — November. Johnson succeeds as United States Sen- 
ator. Criminal Court of the City of New Orleans established — March. 
Louisiana State Bank incorporated. 

1819. Legislature appropriates annually six hundred dollars for public 
schools and three thousand dollars for college of New Orleans, and em- 
powers Regents of the college to raise by lottery twenty-five thousand dol- 
lars. Canal projected by Orleans company to connect Marigay's Canal with 
Mississippi. New Orleans inflicted with yellow fever. 

1820. Law passed organizing the militia. Alexander Millne and others 
empowered to open turnpike road from Lake Pontchartrain to Mississipjji. 
Governor Villere instructed to urge on President of the United States the 
expediency of completing fortifications in Louisiana. Trials by jury granted 
to the parish courts of St. Helena and Washington. Town of Franklin 
made a seat of justice. Monroe incorporated. Thomas B. Robertson 
elected governor. 

1821. City Government empowered to sell its landed property on the 
terms of perpetual grounded rent. Board of Public Health established. 
Act passed for extending and improving public school system. Act passed 
prohibiting gambling. Opelousas incorporated. 

THE ERA OF DEVELOPMENT. 

1822. Legislature divides the State into three Congressional districts. 
Appropriations made for the improvement of navigation in Pearl and Red 
Rivers. Legislature authorizes New Orleans to create public fund or stock 
to the amount of three hundred thousand dollars to be expended in paving 
and watering the city. 

1823. Frost of great severity — February 16. Town of Donaldson incor- 
porated. Charter of the Bank of Orleans extended to 1847. 

1824. Bank of Louisiana established, State being one half shareholder. 
Governor in his message to the Legislature urges their attention to the fail- 
ure of the General Government to take proper measures in regard to the 
public lands. Revised civil code and new code of practice promulgated. 
Governor Robertson resigns to become a judge of the United States Dis- 
trict Court. President Thibodaux of the Senate acts as Governor. Plenry 
Johnson inaugurated governor — December. 

1825. Arrival of Lafayette. Legislature appropriates fifteen thousand 
dollars for his entertainment. Law passed prohibiting aliens from holding 
office within State. City Court of New Orleans organized. Public road 
ordered to be opened from Vidalia to Harrisonburg. Act passed establish- 
ing College of Louisiana to be supported by public school funds of East 
and West Feliciana and by annual appropriation of five thousand dollars 
heretofore voted to the College of Orleans — February 18. Company in- 



ERA OF DliVELOPMEXT. Z\^ 

corporated for opening of turnpike road from New Orleans to Mississippi. 
Duties of tlie Board of Health conferred upon City Council of New Orleans. 
Memorial sent to Congress by Legislature urging Construction of Canal 
direct from Lake I'ontchartrain to Mississippi. Act passed removing seat 
of government from New Orleans to Donaldsonville— February. Act 
passed prohibiting the bringing of slaves into the State for sale. Clos- 
ing of Bayou Manchac authorized. Board of Internal Improvements 
created. 

1826. Two Primary and one Central School established in New Orleans. 
College of Orleans discontinued and its State support voted to the schools. 
Unlimited issue of gambling licenses by State Treasurer decreed to raise a 
fund for the support of the Charity Hospital Orphan Asylum College of 
Louisiana and Schools. Tax imposed on two city theaters for the good of 
the schools. 

1827. Memorial forwarded by Legislature to Louisiana Senators for pre- 
sentation in Congress begging for adjustment of the Public Lands Question. 
$10,000 voted to the heirs of Thomas Jefferson. Act passed abolishing any 
sentencing for white persons to the jjillory. Emancipation of slaves under 
thirty years permitted in certain cases. Barataria and Lafourche Canal 
Company formed to build a canal from the Mississippi to Bayou Lafourche. 
Public School System amended and Fund increased. College of Louisiana 
permitted to raise $40,000 by Lottery. Regents of Public Schools permitted 
to raise $40,000 by Lottery. 

1828. Visit of General Jackson. Celebration of the Anniversary of 
Battle of New Orleans — January 8. Annual Message of the Governor 
touching public lands question. Legislature resolved that the policy of 
Government had retarded and repressed the progress of the State. Prohibi- 
tion upon the introduction of slaves removed. Pierre Derbigny Governor. 

1829. Edward Livingston elected Senator of United States. Act passed 
prohibiting the introduction into the State of a slave child ten years or under 
separate from its mother ; any one selling such a child held liable to a fine. 
Act passed providing for a complete levee system. Death of Derbigny — 
October 7. Jacques Dupre, President of the Senate, acting Governor. 

1830. Legislature meets for its tenth Session at Donaldson — January 4. 
Pontchartrain Railroad Company incorporated. Attempts made to incite 
blacks to insurrection. Act passed making it death for any one to e.xcite 
the slaves against the whites. Act passed prohibiting the teaching of slaves 
to read. Provision made for running boundary-line between Louisiana and 
the territory of Arkansas according to the act of Congress approved May 
19, 1S28. Two thousand dollars appropriated for opening Bayou des 
(liaises to navigation. Act passed excluding free persons of color from 
the State. Franklin and Thibodauxville declared incorporated towns. 

1831. New Orleans again made the seat of government — January 8. 
Bienvenu Roman elected as Governor — January 31. Law relating to 
expulsion of free persons of color amended. Orleans Fire Company organ- 
ized. Gambling houses prohil)ited outside of New Orleans. George A. 



3i6 ERA OF DEVELOPMENT. 



Waggaman elected United States Senator, vice Livingston resigned. New 
Orleans a.nd coast generally damaged by hurricane — August i6. 

1832. Lake Borgne Navigation Company incorporated. Union Bank of 
Louisiana incorporated. Jackson and Covington incorporated towns. 
^50,000 appropriated for a penitentiary at Baton Rouge. Gambling saloons 
permitted in New Orleans, but taxed annually $7,500.. Louisiana depopu- 
lated by Asiatic cholera. 

1833. $20,000 voted to the College of Jefferson. Lafayette chartered 
a town. Provision made for a State Library. Lotteries abolished. 

1834. New Orleans Improvement Company organized. Chamber of 
Commerce organized. Act passed relative to steamboats. 

1835. Edward White, Governor. State made a stockholder in the Bara- 
taria and Lafourche Canal Company. Law enacted imposing fine or impris- 
onment upon keepers of gambling saloons. 

1836. Louisianians moved by the struggles of the Texans for indepen- 
dence. Governor proclaims neutrality. War against Seminoles in Floridas. 
$75,000 appropriated for equipment. Large number of Railroad Company's 
troops incorporated as well as many other stock companies. Robert C. 
Nichols chosen United States Senator. 

1837. Fourteen banks suspend specie payments — May 13. Inundation 
of rag money. Numerous bankruptcies. Lake Borgne Navigation Company 
incorporated. Loan of $500,000 in State bonds made to the New Orleans 
and Nashville Railroad. Alexander Mouton chosen United States Senator. 

1838. Banks issue post-notes. Port Hudson, Springfield and Thibodeaux 
incorporated towns. Education of the deaf and dumb authorized. 

1839. Banks reinstated in their privileges. Number of Justices of 
Supreme Court increased to five. Commercial Court of New Orleans 
created. Law against betting enacted. Act passed against the carrying 
away of slaves. New Orleans Exchange destroyed by fire — February 12. 
Bienvenu Roman, Governor — February 4. 

1840. Legislature abolishes imprisonment for debt. Legislature makes 
appropriation for the cutting of a channel through the falls at Alexandria. 
Extraordinary rise of the Mississippi. Banks again suspend specie pay- 
ments. 

1841. Clinton and Port Hudson Railroad ordered forfeited to the State. 
Work undertaken by the Board of Public Works to open the mouth of the 
Atchafalaya and of the Grand River. Lotteries again generally abolished. 
State grants her share of the Public Lands. Bill passed submitting to 
popular vote the question of calling a convention to amend Constitution. 

1842. Law enacted prohibiting banks from violating charters 'and provid- 
ing for the liquidation of insolvent banks. Seven banks fail. Law passed 
retrenching expenses of State Government. Tax imposed upon real estate 
in several parishes ; other levies also imposed to increase State resources. 
More efficient organization of Militia ordered. School System reformed. 
Howard Association of New Orleans organized. Civil Code amended. 
Disastrous fire in Baton Rouge. 



ERA OF DEl'ELOPMENT. 317 



1843. Alexander Mouton, Clovernor. Insolvent Laws revived. Court 
of I'jrors and Appeals in Criminal cases organized. 

1844. Convention convened at Jackson to amend Constitution — August 
5. Convention adjourned to New Orleans. Henry Johnson elected United 
States Senator. 

1845. New Constitution adopted in Convention — May 14. New Consti- 
tution ratified by popular vote. Act passed for the adjustment and liquida- 
tion of debts proper of the State. Arrival of Hubbard from Massachusetts. 
Hoard of Commissioners for better organization of schools. College of 
Louisiana ordered sold. City of Carrollton incorporated. Appropriation 
made for the encouragement of silk culture. 

1846. Isaac Johnson elected Governor. Hostilities break out on the 
Rio Cirande. Legislature votes $100,000 for raising and transporting four 
regiments to aid of General Taylor. 

1847. Money voted for the closing of crevasses at New Carthage and 
Grand Levee and for erection of a break-water at Bayou Lafourche. $1 50,000 
appropriated for the erection of the New State House at Baton Rouge. 
University of Louisiana established. State Insane Asylum at Jackson 
established. Treasury Department created. Act passed providing for the 
disposal of the " Improvement lands " granted by Congress. School fund 
created based on proceeds of the sale of public lands. Houses of refuge 
for vagrants, etc., established in New Orleans. Pierre Soule elected United 
States Senator. 

1848. Road and Levee fund created. Internal Improvement Fund created. 
Thirty-five thousand dollars voted for the University of Louisiana. Bureau 
of Statistics created. Law about divorce amended. E.xtra Session of the 
Legislature called by Governor — December 24. 

1849. Five hundred and fifty thousand dollars appropriated for support 
of schools. Ten thousand dollars voted to completion of Barataria and 
Lafourche Canal. 

1850. Legislature convened in the new State House at Baton Rouge — 
January 21. Joseph Walker inaugurated Governor — January 28. Grant 
of way through lands belonging to the State to the New Orleans and 
Jackson R. R. Co. Twenty thousand dollars gi^anted for the completion of 
Barataria and Lafourche Canal. Jefferson City incorporated. Board of 
Health created. 

1851. Convention to amend Constitution meets — July. Constitution 
ratified by popular vote — November. 

1852. Bureau of Statistics abolished. One hundred and thirty-eight 
thousand dollars voted for school e.xpenses. State Institution for the deaf, 
dumb and blind founded at Baton Rouge. 

1853. Paul O. Hebert inaugurated governor — January. Plorrible epi- 
demic of yellow fever. Legislature sanctions a general system of free 
banking. Reorganization of the school system. Reclamation of swamp 
lands granted by Congress begun. Tragic ending of the Lopez expedition. 

1854. Another yellow fever epidemic. Free School Accumulating Fund 



3i8 ERA OF CONFLICT. 



created. Appropriation of fifty thousand dollars for reclamation of swamp 
lands. Local Option law passed. Drainage Tax imposed. 

1855. Act prohibiting aliens from holding office passed. State Insane 
Asylum established. New Orleans empowered to establish free schools. 
Married women enabled to contract debts. Town almshouse incorporated. 
New Orleans Savings Institution incorporated. Robert C. Wyckliffe in- 
augurated Governor. 

i8j6. The Last Island storm — August 10. One hundred and thirty 
thousand dollars voted to the Penitentiary. 

1858. Political disturbance. Five hundred men claiming to act under 
a Vigilant Committee seize Court House and State Arsenal. " Know 
Nothing" Party take possession of Lafayette Square. Disturbance subsides. 
Gerard Stitto elected mayor. 

1859. Judah P. Benjamin United State Senator. 

i860. Lincoln elected President. Thomas Overton Moore elected Gov- 
ernor. Extra session of Legislature — December 10. Act passed calling 
for a State Convention. Appropriation of five hundred thousand dollars 
for arming of volunteers. Hon. Wirt Adams Commissioner for Mississippi 
addresses Legislature, announcing what his State has done and asking 
co-operation of Louisiana. Immense Popular Meeting held at New Orleans 

— December 21. Enthusiastic demonstrations made upon the news of the 
secession of South Carolina. Governor Moore issues a proclamation for 
an extra session of the Legislature — November. Legislature meets and 
passes an act providing for a State Convention — December 10. Act passed 
providing five hundred thousand dollars for organization and arming of 
military companies. Mass Meeting held to ratify nomination of " Southern 
Rights " candidates for Convention. 

THE ERA OF CONFLICT. 

1861. State Convention meets — January 23. Ordinance of Secession 
adopted — January 26. Resolution passed in regard to the navigation of 
Mississippi. Barracks and arsenal at Baton Rouge occupied by State 
troops — January 11. Delegates to the Convention for the formation of 
a Southern Confederacy elected — January 30. Meeting of Convention — 
February 4. Jefferson Davis elected President. Surrender of Fort Sumter 

— April 13. Battle of Bull's Run — July 21. Forts Jackson and St. Philip 
and the Arsenal at Baton Rouge seized — January 10. United States 
Revenue Cutter Lewis Cass seized — January 13. Barracks and Marine 
Hospital at New Orleans seized. State Convention meets — January 24. 
Ordinance of Secession adopted — January 26. Act passed transferring 
$536,000 to Confederate Government — January. Confederate Government 
demands troops. Three thousand troops raised. Governor Moore calls for 
three thousand additional troops — April 24. Sixteen thousand men under 
arms — June i. 

1862. Federal naval force under Admiral Farragut and military force 



ERA OF COX/' L/C 7\ 319 



under Clenenil lUitler dispatched against New Orleans — January. Farra- 
gut passes Forts Jackson and St. Philip — April 24. Capture of New 
Orleans — April 25. Surrender of Forts Jackson and St. I'hilip — April 28. 
Capture of liaton Rouge and Natchez. Governor Moore calls for five and a 
half ref^iments — February 14. General Butler takes possession of the city. 
General Shepley appointed Military Governor of Louisiana — August. 

1863. Surrender of Vickshurg — July 4. General Shepley provides a 
system of courts for the State. Free State General Committee appointed. 
Michael Ilahn elected Governor — February 22. Henry W. Allen chosen 
Governor by Confederates. 

1864. Convention for revision of Constitution held — April 6. Constitu- 
tion abolishing slavery adopted. Constitution adopted by the people — 
September 5. Legislature elected and five delegates to Congress — Septem- 
ber 5. Legislature rejects bill giving colored people power of Suffrage. 
15oard of Education for Freedmen established by General Banks. Major- 
Cieneral Canby relieves Major-General Banks. 

1865. Troops drafted by Major-General Canby — February 15. Gov- 
ernor Ilahn resigns and is succeeded by Lieutenant-Governor Wells — 
March 4. Surrender of Lee — April 9. Confederate Governor Allen resigns 
from his position — June 2. Governor Wells elected — November. Legis- 
lature assembles — November 23. Randall Hunt and Henry Boyce elected 
United States Senators — December 6. Bill passed appropriating twenty 
thousand dollars for relief of disabled soldiers. Amendment to Constitu- 
tion adopted by Legislature. 

1866. Regular session of Legislature — January 22. Bill passed authoriz- 
ing election of Municipal officers at an earlier date than fixed by charter. 
Bill vetoed by the Governor. Bill passed over Governor's veto. John T. 
Monroe elected mayor of New Orleans — March 12. General Canby sus- 
pends Monroe from the duties of Mayor because he had refused to take 
oath of allegiance — March 19. General Canby appoints J. A. Roziere, 
Mayor pro tempore. President revokes Cieneral Canby's order and reinstates 
Monroe. Convention of 1864 meets at New Orleans — July 30. Riot in 
New Orleans. Forty policemen and rioters killed — July 30. Legislature 
meets — December 28. Legislature refuses to ratify fifteenth amendment 
to the Constitution. 

1867. Military Reconstruction Act passed — March 2. Louisiana joined 
with Texas to form fifth Military District. General Sheridan appointed 
Commander of district — March 19. General Sheridan removes Herron, 
Attorney-General, Monroe Mayor of New Orleans and Abell, Judge of first 
district Court and appoints successors — March 27. General Sheridan 
begins the registration of voters under the Reconstruction Act — May 15. 
Governor Wells substitutes Board of Levee Commissioners for those 
appointed by Legislature. General Sheridan appoints another set of Com- 
missioners. General Sheridan removes Governor Wells and substitutes 
Durant — June 3. Durant declines and Benjamin F. Flanders is appointed. 
General Sheridan closes the registration of voters— July 31. General 



326 Ej^A OF COiVFLICT. 



Sheridan relieved and Cleneral Hancock substituted — August 17. Teople 
vote for a convention — September. Constitutional Convention meets — 
November 22. Constitution enacted. 

1868. General Hancock relieved and General Buchanan substituted — 
March 18. Constitution ratified — April iS. Henry C. Warmouth, Gov- 
ernor. Mr. Conway elected Mayor. Act by Congress admitting Southern 
States to the Union becomes a law —June 25. Legislature meets — June 27. 
Fourteenth Amendment adopted. William P. Kellogg and John S. Harris 
elected United States Senators. Political Riots in Northern Louisiana. 
Political Riot at Opelousas — September 28. Conflict in St. Bernard Parish 

— October 26. 

1869. Legislature assembles — January 4. Passage of the Social Equality 
Bill. Passage of the Public School Law. Passage of Act authorizing a 
loan of five million dollars. Passage of Act incorporating Ship Island 
Canal Company. Act to incorporate Crescent City Live Stock Landing and 
Slaughter House Company declared unconstitutional. Act to incorporate 
Louisiana Transit Company passed. New Vagrant Law enacted. Revenue 
Bill passed. Fifteenth Amendment Ratified — February 28. Contention 
about the power of the Governor to fill vacancies. Wyckliffe, Auditor of 
the State indicted on charges of corruption. 

1870. Legislature meets — January 3. Governor vetoes twenty-one bills 
involving appropriations to the amount of $6,875,000. Extra session of Legis- 
lature convened — March 3. Education Bill passed. Bill passed giving city 
of New Orleans a new charter. Bill passed to maintain the freedom and 
purity of elections — February iS. Registration Bill passed. Act passed 
granting to New Orleans, Mobile and Chattanooga R. R. Co. three million 
dollars in State bonds. Act passed establishing Eighth District Court in 
New Orleans. Auditor Wyckliffe impeached. Wyckliffe convicted and re- 
moved from office — March 3. James Graham elected auditor and Antoine 
Dubreclet State Treasurer — November 2. People ratify four Constitutional 
Amendments. 

1871. Legislature meets — January 2. General J. R. West elected Senator 

— January 10. (The cost of this legislature to the State was about $960,000.) 
Injunction granted at request of Governor restraining State Auditor from 
the payment of warrants outstanding against appropriations made by the 
legislature. Commission appointed to investigate the matter. Investigation 
reveals a regular system of forgery. Loose manner of issuing warrants 
strongly condemned. State Central Committee call a State Convention — 
July. Committee announces Convention would be held in the United 
States Circuit Court Room — August 8. Opposers of Warmouth meet in 
Custom House — August 9. Friends of Warmouth meet in Turner's Hall 

— August. Death of Lieutenant-Governor Dunn — November 22. Gov- 
ernor calls an extra session of Senate to fill the vacancy and for other 
business — December 6. Senator Pinchbeck elected Lieutenant-Governor. 
Act passed providing for State Board of Education. 

1872. Legislature meets — January i. Resolution passed declaring con- 



Era of coxFLtcT. 321 



fidence in George W. Carter, the speaker — January 2. Governor Warmouth 
arrested by United States otificials. Governor Warmouth calls an extra 
session of Legislature. Speaker's chair declared vacant and O. H. Brewster 
chosen to fill the same. " Carterites " assemble in the " Gem Saloon " and 
style themselves " legal house of Representatives." Hoth rival bodies in 
session — January 6. Wheyland, member of the Warmouth House killed 
in a street scuffle — January 7. Expulsion of Carter and election of Brewster 
ratified — January 24. Committee appointed by Congress to investigate. 
Bill passed funding the indebtedness of the State. Continuous political 
contentiohs and frauds. Convention of the "Custom House Ring" headed 
by Packard held at New Orleans — April 30. Association formed for the 
resistance of excessive taxation. Resolutions adopted condemning the 
extravagance of State Government — May 6. Wing of the Republican 
party headed by Pinchback nominates State Officers — May 28. Democratic 
Convention assemble in New Orleans — June 3. Reform Convention assem- 
ble in New Orleans — June 4. Democratic Reformers and Liberals nominate 
McEnery for Governor. United Republicans nominate Kellogg. Election 
takes place — November 4. Dispute with regard to returns. Kellogg brings 
suit for an injunction restraining the Warmouth board from canvassing the 
returns. Governor Warmouth calls extra session of legislature — Decem- 
ber 9. Governor Warmouth promulgates the new election law. Judge 
Durell decides hi favor of Kellogg. Warmouth publishes his idea of the 
election returns. Legislature (as formed by Republican statement) meets 

— December 9. (jovernor Warmouth impeached and suspended from office. 
Lieutenant-Governor Pinchbeck assumes the duties of Governor. " Fusion " 
Legislature meets in City Llall — December 11. 

1873. William P. Kellogg and John McEnery each inaugurated as Gov- 
ernor — January 14. Congress appoints a committee to investigate the 
trouble. Committee makes a report recommending Congress to pass a bill 
to insure an honest re-election under the authority of United States — 
February 20. Bill lost. Mass Meeting held passing resolutions supporting 
the McEnery government — March i. Members of the McEnery Legisla- 
ture seized and marched as prisoners to guard-house — March 6. Act 
passed by Kellogg Legislature for enforcement of the collection of 
taxes. " Committee of two hundred " issues an address to the people. 
Conflict between negroes and whites in Colfax — April 13. Convention of 
the people held in New Orleans — November 24. Similar Assemblage held 
by Kellogg party. Louisiana case argued by Congressional Committee on 
Elections and Privileges. No decision reached. 

1874. Legislature assembles — Januarys. Act passed prescribing regula- 
tions for a registration of voters. Five Constitutional Amendments ordered 
to be submitted to the people. State Convention of Republican party meet 

— August 5. Antoine Dubruclet nominated for State Treasurer. Democratic 
State Convention meet — August 24. John C. Monicure nominated for 
treasurer. Coushatta tragedy — August 30. Mass Meeting held at New 
Orleans to protest against the Kellogg administration — September 14. 



322 ERA OF PKOGNESS. 



D. B. Penn, unsuccessful candidate for Lieutenant-Governor, calls on the 
people to arm themselves and drive out the usurpers — September 14. 
Severe conflict in New Orleans between insurgents and police. Latter 
worsted — September 14. McEnery and Penn surrender the State build- 
ings to General Brooke — September 17. General Brooke appointed military 
governor. Governor Kellogg resumes his duties — September 19. AdvLsory 
Committee appointed from both parties to agree upon some system of regis- 
tration — September 29. Election held — November 2. Returning Board 
canvasses the returns of the election. Oscar Arroye resigns from the 
board on the ground of its unjust and false methods. Returning Board 
completes its labors and publishes the returns — December 24. Dubruclet 
elected treasurer. Fifty-four Republicans and fifty-two Democrats elected to 
Legislature. President orders General Sheridan to make a tour of inspec- 
tion South and assume command of Department of South, if necessary — 
December 24. 

1875. Legislature meets. Great disturbance. United States troops 
called in — January 8. Congressional Committee makes a report to Con- 
gress — January 15. Another Congressional Committee sent to New Or- 
leans — January 22. " Wheeler Adjustment "agreed to. Governor Kellogg 
calls an extra session of the Legislature — April 14. Wheeler adjustment 
ratified by Legislature. Estilette, Conservative, elected speaker. Suit 
brought against the auditor for irregularity in his accounts. 

1876. Democratic Conservative Convention meets — January 5. Don 
A. Pardie elected United States District Court Judge, but not confirmed by 
Senate. Legislature meets — January 3. J. B. Eustis elected United States 
Senator by Democrats, only three Republicans voting. Act passed making 
five Amendments to the Constitution. Judge Hawkins removed. Governor, 
Kellogg impeached by the House of Representatives — February 28. Senate 
acquits him. Republican Convention to nominate State officers held — 
May 30. Democratic Convention to nominate State officers held — July 24. 
President sends a Committee of Republicans to inspect election. Deputation 
from Democratic party also go to New Orleans. Presidential election held — 
November. Both parties claim the victory. Both Houses of Congress send 
Committees to New Orleans to make investigation. 

1877. Both Governors inaugurated — January 8. Both Legislatures meet. 
President sends a commission to New Orleans — April 5. Packard Legis- 
lature breaks up — April 21. Government troops withdrawn — April 24. 
Nichols Government takes possession of the State House. Judge Henry 
M. Spofford elected United States Senator. Act passed regulating assess- 
ment of taxes. New election law enacted. New school act enacted. Mem- 
bers of the late returning board charged with making counterfeit returns 
— Julys- 

THE ERA OF PROGRESS. 

1878. Thomas C. Anderson convicted — January 28. Thomas C. Ander- 
son acquitted by Supreme Court — March 18. Legislature pass a resolution 



ERA OF PROGRESS. 323 



condemning the admission of Kellogg as Senator in place of Spofford — 
January 17. Legislature pass twenty-one amendments to State Constitution. 
Legislature convened in extra session — March S. Acts passed relating to 
the retrenchment of expenditures. Yellow P'ever Epidemic. Riot in Tensas 
and Concordia Parish. Appropriations made to increase the depth of the 
water on the bar at the mouth of the Mississippi. Wide channel cut 
through the sand bar. Democratic Conservative Convention — August 6. 
Republican Convention — September iS. State election held November 5. 
Large Democratic gains. 

1879. Legislature meets — January6. J. T. Moncure elected Speaker. Act 
passed providing for a State Constitutional Convention. B. F. Jonas elected 
Senator. Difficulty in assessing the taxes. Election of delegates to Con- 
stitutional Convention — March 18. Meeting of Convention — April 21. 
Ordinance relative to State debt ordered to be submitted to the people. 
Constitution enacted. Democratic State Convention — October 6. Repub- 
lican State Convention — October 21. Constitution ratified by the people 

— December 8. Wiltz elected Governor. Ordinance relative to State debt 
passed. 

1880. Legislature meets under the new Constitution at Baton Rouge — 
January 14. Bureau of Agriculture and Immigration created. Act passed 
providing for the payment of the interest on the public debt. Act passed 
to liquidate the indebtedness of New Orleans through a Board of Liquida- 
tion. Bands of negroes strike work in parishes St. John, St. James and 
St. Charles — March. University for Higher Education of colored boys 
opened. 

1881. Organized strike in New Orleans — September i. Great railroad 
development in Louisiana. Death of Governor Wiltz. Lieutenant-Gov- 
ernor McEnery succeeded him — October. Special Session of Legislature 

— December 5. Act passed completing restoration of Capitol at Baton 
Rouge. Act passed making appropriations for expenses of Government, 
interest on public debt, public schools, and public charities, etc. Legislature 
begins its second extra session — December 26. Act passed providing for 
the investing of the interest tax fund and for payment of reduced interest 
on .State bonds. 

1882. Unprecedented floods and overflows. Louisiana State University 
reorganized. Governor expresses dissatisfaction with the Constitution of 
1879. Acts passed to meet the heavy debts of New Orleans. Mr. Tulare, a 
citizen of New Orleans, gives large donations for the education of the white 
youth of that city. Two hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the 
mouths of the Mississippi by La Salle — April 10. 

1883. Cases in which Vermont and New York brought action against 
Louisiana to enforce payment of consolidated bonds dismissed by Chief- 
Justice Waite — March 5. Levee Convention held at Baton Rouge — June 19. 
Democratic Convention at Baton Rouge — December 18. Governor McEnery 
renominated. 

1884. Republican State Convention held at New Orleans— March 5. 



324 ERA OF PROGRESS. 



John A. Stevenson nominated for Governor. Election held — April 22. 
McEnery elected Governor and Knoblock Lieutenant-Governor. Legislature 
meets — May 12. James B. Eustis elected United States Senator — May 20. 
Convention held in favor of Republican Presidential Candidates — August 30. 
Presidential election. State largely Democratic — November 4. Mississippi 
Valley Railroad completed. 

1885. Citizen's Committee of one hundred organized in New Orleans 
— May. World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition formally 
closed — June i. Prohibition Convention held — August 19. State Execu- 
tive Committee constituted. North, Central and South American Exposition 
opened — November 10. Randall L. Gibson, United States Senator. 

1886. Legislature meets — May 10. Act passed closing all places of 
business on Sunday. Act providing for police juries throughout the State. 
Act passed for the protection of settlers on State Lands. Act passed for 
the protection of alluvial State Lands by erection of levees. Act passed to 
collect and enforce payment of annual License tax. Act passed appropriat- 
ing fourteen thousand dollars to Southern University of New Orleans. 
Act passed regulating the hours of labor for women and children. 

1887. Political contest between Governor McEnery and Ex-Governor 
Nichols to secure the nomination of the Democratic Convention — August. 

1888. Howard Memorial Library, valued at $100,000, erected in New 
Orleans by the heirs of Charles T. Howard of that city. 



THE PEOPLES' COVENANT 

AS EMBODIED IN THE CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE 
OF LOUISIANA. 



The changing conditions of so peculiarly constituted a people as were 
the citizens of Louisiana necessarily resulted in a varying succession of 
desires as to the composition of the bond of union that held together the 
people and sections of the Commonwealth. This led to a frequent change 
of constitutions but shows the growth and progress of the State alike in 
population and in ideas. 

The first Constitution was adopted January 22, 1812. It gave the right of 
suffrage to adult, white male ta.x-payers of one year's residence. Repre- 
sentatives must own $500 in land; senators $1,000 in land; governor $5,000 
in land. Governor chosen by legislature from two highest candidates in a 
popular election. 

The second Constitution was adopted November 5, 1845. I^s chief object 
was to restrict the legislature in chartering corporations and to prohibit 
State aid to corporations. It dropped the property qualification and made 
the choice of a governor depend on popular vote. 

The third Constitution was ratified November i, 1852. It secured an 
elective judiciary for short terms. 

The fourth Constitution was ratified .September 5, 1864. It made no 
limitation except for crime on adult white, male suffrage. First constitution 
to mention slavery for the purpose of abolishing it. It was never recognized 
by Congress. 

The fifth Constitution was ratified August 17-18, 1868. It prohibited 
slavery, gave the right of suffrage to all adult male citizens of one year's 
residence and in other ways accepted the results of the war. It was amended 
in 1870 and 1874. 

The sixth and last Constitution was ratified in December, 1879. 

[In 1861 a .State Convention passed an ordinance of secession which it 
refused to submit to the popular vote. In the same way it ratified the Con- 
stitution of the Confederate States.] 

The Constitution of 1879 's divided into a preamble, 19 sections, 264 
articles and 4 ordinances. The Preamble reads as follows : 

"This Constitution is framed to secure to the people with the aid of God, 

3^5 



326 THE CONSTirUriOiY. 



the author of all good government, public peace and prosperity and the 
blessings of liberty." 

Section One embraces in 12 articles a declaration of rights: 

Article I. The government derives its powers from the will of the people 
and its sole object is to protect them. 

Article II. The people shall be secure against unreasonable seizure of 
person and property. 

Articles III. and IV. The right of bearing arms, religious freedom, the 
right of assembly, the right of petition, freedom of speech and of the press 
shall be inviolate. 

Article V. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever be per- 
mitted except as a punishment for crime. No person shall be put on trial 
twice for the same offence. 

Article VI. The law must give reparation for injury without unreason- 
able delay. No person shall be condemned without due process of law. 
The accused is not bound to witness against himself. 

Article VII. Criminal trials must be held in the town where the offence 
is committed. In specified cases the jury may count less than twelve mem- 
bers. 

Article VIII. The accused shall have the right of challenge. (Here 
follows a detailed method of conducting trials.) 

Article IX. Bail shall be allowed. Excessive bail or excessive fines can- 
not be imposed nor cruel nor unusual punishments inflicted. 

Article X. The writ of habeas corpus shall be suspended only when in 
case of rebellion or invasion the public safety demands it. 

Article XI. The military power is subject to the civil power. 

Section Two treats of the distribution of powers : 

The powers of the government are three — Legislative, Executive and 
Judicial. These powers must not infringe except in so far as this Constitu- 
tion directs or permits. 

Section Three deals with the legislative department. This is vested in 
a Senate and House of Representatives. The number of members is deter- 
mined by population. Qualifications of members : five years citizenship of 
the State, and two years residence in the district which elects, and oath. 
Term of office : four years. Members are subject to certain incapacities as 
to holding office. Their persons shall be inviolable during the sessions. If 
they have any interest in the pending deliberations they must declare them- 
selves interested parties and abstain from voting. 

Biennial sessions. Verification of powers, rules of procedure, choice of 
the functionaries, disciplinary power, adjournment, quorum, printing of 
journal all carefully provided for. Promulgation by insertion in the official 
journal. The chambers alone can pardon treason, suspend the laws, limit 
the disciplinary powers of the courts. 

Appropriation and revenue bills must take their initiative in the House 
but the Senate may amend. 

The governor may veto but a two thirds vote of both houses overrides his 



THE CONSTITUTION. 327 



veto. Appropriations may be vetoed in part. The governor may not keep 
a bill more than five days. Adjournment of the legislature before the expi- 
ration of this limit prevents a bill from becoming a law. 

The chambers can involve the State in debt only to repel an invasion or 
put down an insurrection. 

K.xcept in giving to railroads and canals the right of way over public lands 
the State cannot aid corporate or individual enterprises and cannot abandon 
claims against them. It cannot furnish pecuniary aid to any religion, nor 
to institutions of charity not under its authority. The law cannot fi.\ the 
price of manual labor, nor grant a preference to any religion. In a very 
large number of cases .special and local laws are prohibited. Where the 
Constitution does not prohibit, laws of private or local interest are permitted. 

Section Four deals with the e.\ecutive department. This is composed 
of a governor, lieutenant-governor, auditor, treasurer and secretary of state. 
The governor is elected by the same electors, at the same time and in the 
same places as the members of the two houses. Term of office : four years. 
A majority elects. In case of a tie the chambers in joint session elect. 

Qualifications. Thirty years of age, ten years' citizenship of United 
States and residence in the State, neither a member of Congress, nor federal 
office-holder, or have ceased to be for at least si.x months. Salary, $4,000. 

Powers. Execution of the laws, command of the militia, right to demand 
reports of his subordinates and to send messages to the legislature, also to 
convoke the legislature in extraordinary cases but not for more than twenty 
days, pardoning power, nominating power in specified cases and filling of 
vacancies with consent of the senate, if in session. Time and place of elec- 
tion, term of office are the same for the lieutenant-governor as for governor. 
Circumstances in which he becomes acting-governor specified. He presides 
in the senate, but does not vote except in case of a tie. 

Treasurer, auditor and secretary of state are elected for four years. 

Section Five deals with the judicial department. It has four divisions. 
I. The Supreme Court. Ii. Courts of Appeal, in. District Courts, iv. 
Justices of the Peace. 

The Supreme Court has a chief justice and four judges, nominated by the 
governor with the senate. Term of office: twelve years. Qualifications: 
ten years law practice. Salary $5,000. Jurisdiction, time and place of sit- 
ting, rules of procedure and accountability defined. 

Qualifications, time and manner of appointment, terms of office, salaries, 
rules of procedure, jurisdiction, accountability, issue of writs, time and place 
of sitting determined for the three other courts. Powers and duties of the 
procuror-general, clerks of the courts, coroners, sheriffs and constables. 

Section Six treats of the State militia. A well-ordered militia is neces- 
sary. No pay except for active service. The police cannot form a part of 
the militia. In time of peace soldiers can not be lodged at a private house 
except with the consent of the owners. Citizens may be excused from 
service. 

Section Seven defines suffrage and election. Vote is to be by ballot. 



328 THE CONSTITUTION. 



Qualifications of elector: male sex, citizen of United States or having ex- 
pressed legally an intention of becoming one, twenty-one years of age, resi- 
dence of one year in State, six months in parish, thirty days in the electoral 
district. Qualifications for office holding: citizen of the State, resident and 
voter in the place where office is bestowed. Disqualifications for both : 
conviction for crime, idiocy, insanity. Race, color or former condition of 
servitude no disqualification. Electors privileged from arrest on the day of 
election. No liquors sold on election day within a mile of voting places. 
Contested elections provided for. 

Section Eight treats the power of impeachment and removal. All ex- 
ecutive officers, superintendent of public instruction and the judges of the 
courts of record may be impeached. Process described. The governor 
may remove every office holder at the request of two thirds of the mem- 
bers of each chamber. 

Section Nine is devoted to taxes and the revenue. Taxes are levied by 
the State, counties and towns. Purposes carefully limited. Manner of col- 
lecting described. No revenue bill can be passed by legislature within the 
five days of the close of the session nor for a period longer than ten years. 
Exempts certain professions, also certain kinds of property. Provides for 
poll tax not to exceed #1.50, also for levee tax. Public calamities alone can 
authorize the chambers to delay the payment of the taxes. Mode of pro- 
cedure in case of non-payment. 

Section Ten defines the rights of debtors and creditors, and fixes the 
amount of property allowed the debtor. 

Section Eleven treats of the public schools. The State must support 
public schools for all children between six and eighteen. Poll tax goes to 
the schools of county where it is raised. Other taxes distributed in propor- 
tion to the number of children. No part of public school revenues can be 
given to religious schools. 

The State must support the University of New Orleans, organize a special 
university for the blacks, and maintain the University of Baton Rouge. 

Section Twelve deals with the construction of corporations. General 
laws must direct the organization of private corporations. Every corpo- 
ration must conform to the Constitution. Banking institutions cannot 
without crime or pecuniary responsibility receive deposits or contract debts 
if they know themselves to be insolvent. 

Every monopoly is abolished except the railroad. Regulates the building 
and use of abattoirs. 

Section Thirteen treats of the affairs of the several counties. The 
chambers form, modify, dissolve them. Determines the minimum extent 
and population. 

Section Fourteen states special provisions and exceptions to the general 
provisions of the Constitution respecting the city of New Orleans. 

Section Fifteen states that the government shall have full control 
of the new canal and Shell road and determines that they can neither be 
sold nor leased. 



THE CONSTIJCrJOX. 



329 



Secti(;n Sixteen embraces certain general provisions. 

Seat of the government at Baton Rouge. Treason defined. 

The law may regulate the sale and use of spirituous liquors and prohibit 
gambling. Every town or county must support its own poor. Every lottery 
shall be prohibited after Jan. i, 1S95, and every lottery shall be subject to a 
tax of at least ^40,000. The law must protect the working classes and 
assure them the payment of their wages. It must establish a Bureau of 
Health, protect against the illegal practice of medicine and organize a 
Bureau of Agriculture. Conviction of crime punishable by imprisonment 
renders incapable of jury service. No one can hold two offices, nor after 
handling public revenues accept an ofiice without previous discharge. Office- 
holders cannot receive other remuneration than their regular salary. Eng- 
lish the official language, but the laws may be promulgated in French. 

Section Seventeen establishes the method of amendment and revision. 

Two thirds of both houses must first vote in favor, then a majority of the 
popular vote makes the change. 

Section Eighteen is devoted to a schedule facilitating the application of 
the Constitution. 

Section Nineteen incorporates four ordinances with the Constitution. 
The first facilitates the payment of various ta.xes. Second provides for the 
payment of a large sum due the fiscal agent of the State. The third pro- 
vides for a loan of $25,000. The fourth provides for the payment of the 
interest on State bonds. 



3 ^ .:: 



A SELECTION OF BOOKS 

TOUCHING UPON THE STORY OF LOUISIANA. 

The books devoted to the story of the growth of Louisiana 
from the earliest times through the Spanish and French domi- 
nation are many. Nearly all the best works are in French or 
are translations from the French. The literature of the period 
of the American rule is rather scanty. As has already been 
shown the fiction and romance of the State are of comparatively 
recent growth but they are very promising and enlist now the 
best work of some of America's most popular writers. The 
histories of the State are classed in the following list : 

I. " Historical Collections of Louisiana," by B. F. French in 5 vols. 
(1S46-53). This is one of the fullest works on the early history. Does not 
go beyond 1770. II- The second of the great works on early Louisiana 
history is the " History of Louisiana," by Charles Gayarre, in 5 vols. (N. 
Y. 1851-54.) President Adams of Cornell says of the volumes that this 
work is " The fruit of arduous and loving study, not only in Louisiana but 
also in the archives of France and other European States." III. His final 
work was published in 1S85. Was mainly the same as the preceding, but 
was brought down to 1861. In this edition two volumes are given to the 
French, one to the Spanish and one to the American. Its title, " History 
of Louisiana: the Spanish Domination, the French Domination, the 
American Domination." IV. Gayarre publishes still another work not to 
be confounded with the preceding : " Louisiana, its Colonial History and 
Romance." It abounds in anecdote and is valuable as a picture of early 
Southern life. V. " The History of Louisiana from the Earliest Period," 
by Francois Xavier Martin, 2 vols. (N. O. 1827-29.) "A complete and 
in the main accurate compendium of the materials at his command," says 
Mr. A. M. Davis. Extends to 181 5. In 1882 a new edition was published 
to which was appended Annals of Louisiana up to 1S61. By J. F. Condon. 
VI. Other works dealing with portions of the period prior to the Civil 
War are : 

330 



A'OOA'S RELATING TO LOUISIANA. ^X 



I. "A Description of Louisiana." By Father Louis Hennepin. Trans- 
lated from the edition of 1683. (N. Y. 1880.) "The most valuable as well 
as the most graphic of the original accounts of La Salle's explorations and 
the only detailed narrative of Hennepin's voyage up the Mississippi." 
President Adams. 2. " History of the American Indians" by James Adair. 
A work of great value. It treats particularly of those nations adjoining the 
Mississippi. 3. Description of the English Province of Carolana, by the 
Spaniards called Florida and by the French Louisiana. By Daniel Coxe. 
A verv curious work. 4. Travels through that part of North America for- 
merly called Louisiana. By M. Bossu. (London, 177 1) 2 vols. 5. "Early 
Voyages up and down the Mississippi." By Dr. Shea. A collection of 
translations of several voyages. Carefully annotated. 6. Early Jesuit 
Missions. By Bishop Kip. (Albany, 1866.) 7. Sketches, Historical and 
Descriptive of Louisiana. By Major Amos Stoddard. (1812.) An unos- 
tentatious and modest book. 8. New Orleans and Environs. A brief 
historical sketch of the territory and State and of the city of New Orleans 
from earliest period to 1845. 9- Charlevobc's " New France." Translation. 
(London, 1763.) An account of personal adventures. 10. Butel Dumont, 
George M. History of Louisiana from 16S7-1740. Derives its interest ^ 4" 

from his personal experiences. 11. History of Louisiana. By L^^Fage. ^^ \'''<''"'Ypj 
(London, 1774.) Because of his residence has a value which his manifest 
egotism and whimsical theories cannot entirely obscure. 12. "Travels in 
Louisiana and the Floridas in the year 1S02," giving a correct picture of 
those countries. By Benjamin Duvallon. Translation. (N. Y. 1806.) 
13. Fifty Years in Both Hemispheres; or reminiscences of the life of a 
former merchant. Tran.slated from the German. (N. Y. 1S54.) Relates 
largely to affairs in and about New Orleans during the early part of this 
century. 14. History of Kansas. Embracing a concise sketch of Louis- 
iana in its relations to American slavery. By John N. HoUoway. (1868.) 
15. Memoir of the War in Western Florida and Louisiana. By Arsine 
Latour. Translation. (Phila. 1816.) 16. Bonner's History of Louisiana to 1840. 

VII. Numerous works in French treat of the same period, but they do 
not seem to have been translated. 

VIII. For the Louisiana Purchase see Constitutional History of United 
States, by Von Hoist. Vol. I. 

IX. There is no comprehensive work upon the period since the begin- 
ning of the Civil War. There are the various histories of the Rebellion ; also : 

I. "General Butler in New Orleans" by James Parton. 2. "Life of 
A. P. Dostie or the Conflict in New Orleans" by Emily Hazan Reed. 3. 
" Life of David Glasgow Farragut, First Admiral of the United States Navy," 
by his son. (New York.) A large space devoted to the capture of New 
Orleans and the opening of the Mississippi. 4. A soldier's Story of the 
War. Including the marches and battles of the Washington Artillery 
and other Louisiana troops. An appendix of camp stories and tales of 
the Crescent City. 5. "The Creoles of Louisiana" by George W. Cable. 
(N. Y., 1884.) A history of the Creoles and of New Orleans. 



332 BOOKS RELATING TO LOUISIANA. 



In Fiction Louisiana forms the setting for the following : 

I. " Atala " by Chateaubriand, a story of Indian life in Louisiana founded 

upon the author's travels there. Romantic but not accurate. 2. "Rene" 

by Chateaubriand. Another Indian tale similar to Atala. 3. "Creole 

Stories " by Prof. James A. Harrison. 4. '• Creole Tales " by J. B. Cobb. 

5. "Lafitte, the Pirate of the Mexican Gulf." A tale by J. H. Ingraham. 

6. "Old Creole Days," "Dr. Sevier," "Madame Delphine," "The Gran- 
dissimes " and " Bonarventure " by George W. Cable. 7. " Monsieur 
Motte," "Bonne Maman " and "Madame Lareveilliere " by Grace King. 
" A faithful presentation of the impulsive Southern temperament instinct 
with the warmth of the Southern sun." 8. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by 
Harriet Beecher Stowe. Has an alleged but not entirely trustworthy picture 
of slave life in Louisiana before the war. 9. "The Man without a Coun- 
try " by Edward Everett Hale. 10. " Philip Nolan's Friends " by Edward 
Everett Hale. 11. " In War Times at La Rose Blanche" by Mrs. M. E. 
M. Davis. A lively and pathetic picture of home life in Louisiana during 
the Civil War. (Boston, 188S.) 

In Poetry, the following titles may be enumerated as bearing on Louis- 
iana's Story : 

I. " Evangeline " by Henry W. Longfellow. 2. " Ballads of the War " 
by A. J. H. Duganne. 3. "Louisiana" by Mrs. Hemans. 4. "The 
Battle of New Orleans " by Thomas Dunn English. 5. " Out of the Plague 
Stricken City" by M. B. Williams; Yellow fever. 6. " War Lyrics " by 
Henry Howard Brownell. Several of them deal with events in Louisiana 
— The River Fight in particular. 7. "The Heart of Louisiana" by 
Harriet Stanton. 8. "We Come! We Come!" by W. Mayfield. 9. 
" Mumford the Martyr of New Orleans " by Ina Porter. 



INDEX. 



Abadie, M. de, governor of colony, 104 ; 
siirreiidered colony to Spain, 104. 

Acadian settlers in Louisiana, 102, 103, 241. 

Adair, American general at Battle of New 
Orleans, 22S. 

Atkins, Henry Watkins, Confederate gover- 
nor, 273. 

Aubrey, M., director-general for France, 107 ; 
shields the Spaniards, loS ; provost over- 
ruled by colonists, log ; recognizes Ulloa 
as governor, 109 ; courtesy toward Spanish 
officers, 112. 

Baton Rouge, British fort at, 122 ; captured 
by Galvez, 124; citizens ask protection of 
United States, 191 ; establishes provisional 
government, 191 ; State House erected, 
253- 

Battalion d'Orleans, The, 215. 

Bay St. Louis, settlement at, 22 ; natural 
beauties of, 25. 

Bienville, LaMoyne de, his mission to the 
Indians, 28; meets English frigate, 29; 
succeeds Sauvolle, 30; establishes post at 
Mobile, 30; receives supplies, 31 ; quarrels 
with colonial officers, 32 ; made lieutenant- 
governor, 32; dispatched against the In- 
dians, 37; builds Fort Rosalie, 47 ; quarrels 
with L'Kpinay, 38; character of, 40; or- 
dered to secure a site for a town on the 
Mississippi, 47 ; commissioned as governor, 
47 ; chooses site of New Orleans, 48; cap- 
tures Pensncola, 49; recaptures Pensacola, 
53; urges agriculture, 59; cast down by 
Law's failure, 64; occupies Fort Rosalie, 
64 ; attacks the Indians, 66 ; sees prosperity 
in the colony, 71 ; superseded by P^rier, 
72; again appointed governor, 88; attacks 
the Indians, 89; defeated by them, 91 ; in 
disgrace, 92; again fails in Indian cam- 
paign, 95 ; superseded by Vaudreuil, 95 ; his 
character, 96. 

r.ienviUe, Noyan, arrested by O'Rielly, 115; 
executed, ti6. 

Biloxi, settlement at, 22 ; natural beauties of, 
25 ; condition of the settlement, 30. 



Bollman, Dr. Erick, arrested for conspiracy, 
1S7; re]eased on /utieas cor/us, 188. 

Bor^, Etienne, establishes sugar-cane culture, 
142 ; mayor of New Orleans, 171. 

Boisbriant, M. de. in charge of fort at Biloxi, 
30; among the Illinois, 54; governor of the 
Illinois country, 59. 

Buccarelly, Don Antonio Maria, Spanish 
governor, 1 18. 

Buccaneers, The, 19, 20; see Lafitte. 

Burr, Aaron, intrigues of, 186; threatens 
New Orleans, 187; arrest of, 189. 

Bvitler, General B. F., in New Orleans, 270. 

Cable, George W., 299. 

Cadillac, La Motte, governor of colony, 32 ; 
goes gold-hunting, 36; superseded by 
L'Epinay, 37. 

Canal, from Lake Ponchartrain, made by 
Carondelet, 144. 

Caresse, arrested by O'Reilly, 115 ; e.xecuted 
116. 

Caroline, the schooner, at Battle of New 
Orleans, 214; blown up, 216. 

Carondelet, Don Francisco Louis Hector, 
Baron de, Spanish governor, 136; fortifies 
New Orleans, 139; makes treaties with 
Indians, 139; intrigues for United States 
territory, 141; cuts canal from Lake Pon- 
chartrain, 144; tampers wiih people of 
Kentucky and Tennessee, 146; and Wilkin- 
son, 149; appointed governor of Mexico, 
150. 

Casa Calvo, Marquis de, Spanish governor, 
154; superseded by Salcedo, 155; returns 
to province, 166; his campaign of dinners, 
169; delivers province to Fiance, 170. 

Cat Island, settlement at, 22 ; location of, 23 ; 
mutiny at, 100; invested by British, 204. 

Chainpmeslin, Cointe de, attacks Pensacola, 
52- 

Chopart, commander at Fort Rosalie, 74 ; 
killed by Indians, 76. 

Charles V. of Spain and Germany, 12, 13. 

Charlevoix, Father, in New Orleans, 62 ; sees 
wild indigo growing in Mississippi, 69. 



333 



334 



INDEX. 



Cliateaguay, La Moyne de, left in command 
at Pensacola, 50; surrenders to Spaniards, 
5°- 
Claiborne, Governor, of Mississippi, commis- 
sioner to receive Louisiana for United 
States, 171; takes possession, 173; issues 
proclamation as governor, 173 ; urges action 
against Spaniards, 185; denounces Burr's 
treason, 1S8; organizes militia, 188; raises 
American flag at Francisville, 192 ; unable 
to avert Indian troubles, 201 ; assists Jack- 
son, 203; in 1815,211; seeks aid of Lafitte's 
pirates, 215 ; administration closed, 252. 

Clarke, Jr., Daniel, raises militia for protec- 
tion of New Orleans, 175. 

Codero, Don Antonio, Spanish governor of 
Texas, invades Louisiana, 1S5 ; intrigues 
with Wilkinson, 186. 

Coffee, General, American general, 205, 206, 
207. 

Collot, General, on defenses of New Orleans 
in 1795, 148. 

Creeks and Chickasaws (see Indians). 

Creoles, The, their love for France, 122 ; 
their " genealogy," 165 : join Clarke's mili- 
tia, 175; defense of, 180; loyalty of in 
1812, 211, 212, 214, 215; in Louisiana, 240 ; 
interested in literature, 296. 

Crozat, Sieur Antony, granted exclusive 
right of trade in Louisiana, 32; ignorance 
regarding the colony, 35; abandons his 
contract, 38. 

Dacquin, at Battle of New Orleans, 215. 

D'Artaguette, marches against the Indians, 
89; defeated by them, 92. 

Davis, Mrs. RL E. M., 299. 

DeLeon (see Leon). 

Depassau, Captain George, leads an attack 
on Baton Rouge, 191. 

Derbigny, Pierre, elected governor, 244; dies 
in ofifice, 245. 

Dernisseau, M., granted control of trade of 
the Missouri, 96. 

DeSoto (see Soto). 

Delery, 296. 

Dufour, 296. 

Dugud, 296. 

Delpit, 296. 

Doucet, M., joins revolt against Spain, no. 

Dupre, Jacques, succeeds Governor Der- 
bigny, 245. 

English, in Louisiana, 24, 29, 80, 98, 122, 124, 
128, 201; defeated at Mobile, 202; appear 
before New Orleans, 204 ; entrenched near 
New Or!' ans, 214 ; attack the Anieiicans, 



207; defeated in Battle of New Orleans, 
233. 
Espeleta, joins expedition against Pensacola, 

126, 128. 
" Filles a la Cassette," 165. 
Flournoy, General, supersedes Wilkinson, 

200; superseded, 202. 
Focault, commissary, joins in revolt against 

Spain, no. 
" Frankland, State of," desires to join Spain, 

135- 
French privateer threatens New Orleans, 146. 
Galvez, Don Bernard de, Spanish governor, 
121; and Col. Morgan, 122; assaults the 
English, 123 ; captures Baton Rouge ; made 
brigadier-general, 124; leads expedition 
against Mobile, 124; captures Mobile, 125; 
assaults Pensacola, 125; branch of, 127; 
captures Pensacola, 12S; honored and re- 
warded, 129; made captain-general, 130; 
his character, 130; his wife, 130. 
Gayarre, Charles, his history of Louisiana, 

296. 
Gayoso, Don Manuel, Spanish governor, 
150; restricts immigration, 153; death of, 
154. 
Genet, M., intrigues against Louisiana, 141. 
Gibbs, Major-General Samuel, British gen- 
eral, 215; leads British charge, 229. 
Gourges, Dominic de, 16. 
Grandpre, Governor, 184, 191. 
Guizot, on John Law's failure, 60. 
Hahn, Michael, elected governor, 273. 
Hearn, Lafcadio, 299. 
Hebert, P. O., elected governor, 247. 
Herrera, General, invades Louisiana, 186; 

retreats before Wilkinson, 186. 
Iberville, Pierre Le Moyne de, reaches Louisi- 
ana, 22, 23 ; enters the Mississippi, 25 ; 
sails for France, 26; returns, 30; sails for 
France, 30; detained in Europe, 31. 
Indians, trouble with, 66; outbreak of, 75; 
capture Fort Rosalie, 76; excesses of, 77; 
attacked by Le Sueur, 78; defeated by 
Perier, 84 ; Natchez tribe make a last stand, 
85-86 ; defeat Bienville and D'Artaguette, 
91-95 ; make treaties with Carondelet, 139; 
attack Fort Mims, 201. 
Irving, Theodore, on De Soto, 13. 
Izrabel, Don Jose Cabro de, commands Span- 
ish expedition against Pensacola, 125; de- 
lays the attack, 126 ; supports attacked by 
Galvez, 127. 
Jackson, Andrew, 180, 199; routs the Indians 
at Talladega, 201 ; at Tohopeka, 202 ; super- 



INDEX. 



335 



sedes General Floiirnay, 202 ; strenglliens 
defenses, 202 ; takes Pensacola, 202 ; foi li- 
fies New Orleans, 203 ; movements asainst 
British, 204, 205, 206; engages British 
forces, 207; " the man for the emergency," 
208; enemies in New Orleans, 212; fights 
the battle of New Orleans, 219, 22.1, 227, 

231. 

Johnson, Henry, elected governor, 244. 

Johnson, Isaac, elected governor, 246. 

Joliet, Louis, 20. 

Jones, Lieutenant, his tlotilla captured by 
British, 204. 

Kemper brothers, the, arrest and rescue of, 
184. 

Kerlerec, AL le Capitain, governor of colony, 
99; troubles of, loi. 

King, Grace, 299. 

" Know Nothing," disturbance, 255. 

Lacaste, at Battle of New Orleans, 215. 

Lafitte, Jean, the buccaneer, 197, 198; joins 
the American forces, 215. 

LafreniJre, attorney-general, leads revolt 
against Spain, no; arrested by O'Reilly, 
115; execution of, 116. 

La Salle, Robert Cavelier de, 21. 

Last Island, destruction of, 254. 

Laussat, M., French prefect, 160; arrives in 
New Orleans, 165: and Casa Calvo, 169; 
instructed to deliver Louisiana to the 
United States, 169 ; publishes terms of 
treaty, 170; snubs Spanish officers, 172; 
delivers province to United States, 173. 

Law, John, 43 ; hi* financial schemes, 44-4'^ ; 
secures grant of land in Louisiana, 57 ; fail- 
ure of, 60. 

Laudonnifere, Rene Gonlaine de, 16. 

Leon, John Ponce de, i6. 

L'Epinay, M. de, governor of colony, 37, 3S. 

Lepouse, 296. 

Le Sueur, M., marches against the Indians, 
78. 

Lopez, Don Ramon, Spanish Intendant, 
154; removes restrictions of Gayoso, 154. 

Lopez, General, the " fillibuster," 247. 

Loubois, Chevalier, attacks the Indians, 79; 
builds new Fort Rosalie, 79. 

Louisiana, first settlement of, 22 ; natural 
beauties of, 23 ; right of trade in, granted 
to Crozat, 32; under Law's schemes, 4;; 
character of early settlers, 48; harassed by 
Spaniaids and Indians, 53; lands granted 
to prominent Frenchmen, 57; first success- 
ful planters in, 60; made independent of 
Canada, 65; resources of, 69; prosperity 



begins, 71 ; trouble with Indians, 75-77 ; de- 
clared free to all Frenchmen, 86; devastated 
by tornado, 97 ; cotton and sugar cultivated, 
98; financial depression in, loi ; growth 
of, 102; transferred to Spain, 103; resists 
transfer to Spain, 107; submits, 115; under 
O'Reilly, iiS; under Unzaga, 121; during 
American Revolution, 121 ; growth of 
emigration, 123 ; elation at successes against 
British, 124 ; depression in, 129; boundaries 
fixed by treaty of 1783, 130; population of, 
111 1785, 133; revival of emigration, 133; 
fortified by Carondelet, 140; development 
of sugar industry, 145 ; boundaries by treaty 
of 1795, 145; troubles with United States, 
153; increase of immigration, 155; ceded 
to France, 156; sold to United States, 
157; ignorance of Napoleon's plans, 161 ; 
population in 1803, 162 ; state of province, 
174; boundaries of, 176; attractions of, 
177; called "Territory of Orleans." 178 ; 
society in, 179; sugar industry, 182; dur- 
ing Burr's insurrection, 189; admitted into 
the Union, 196; enlarged, 196; population 
in 1813, igg; careless as to defenses, 203 ; 
after Battle of New Orleans, 238; Consti- 
tution of, 242; classes in, 243; sugar in- 
dustry most prosperous, 245 ; sends troops 
to Mexican War, 246; depression in busi- 
ness, and finances, 252 ; society and life in, 
255; slavery in, 257; secession of, 259; 
expedition against, 263 ; after the war, 275, 
279; prosperity of, 2S6. 

Louisiana, The ship, at Battle of New Or- 
leans, 214; escapes from British, 217; si- 
lences the British batteries, 218. 

Mansfield, Battle of, 274. 

Marquette, Father, 20. 

Marquis, Captain, joins revolt against Spain, 
no; arrested, 115; executed, 116. 

Mazent, M., joins revolt against Spain, no. 

Menendez, Pedro de Aviles, 16. 

Merciir, 296. 

Martin, Judge, his History of Louisiana, 296. 

Milhet, arrested by O'Reilly, 115; executed, 
116. 

Mims, Fort, massacre at, 293. 

Mir6, joins expedition against Pensacola, 126, 
128; strives to promote emigration lo- 
Louisiana, 133; and Wilkinson, 134; >"- 
trigues of, 135. 

Mississippi City, natural beauties of, 25. 

Mississippi Company, The, constituted, 44 ; 
send war-ships, 49; send supplies and rein- 
forcements, 52; embarrassments of, 59; 



Z2>(^ 



INDEX. 



failure of, 60; surrender all riglits to the 
crown, 86, 
Mississippi River, The, reached by De Soto, 
14; navigated by Spaniards, 15; reached 
by Joliet, 20; by La Salle, 21; region 
about its delta, 22 ; above its mouth, 24; 
entered by d'Iberville, 25 ; closed to traders 
by O'Reilly, 117 ; made free by treaty, 130 ; 
commerce restricted by Salcedo, 155 ; con- 
trol secured by United States, 160; trade 
of, 176; enjoys steam navigation, 239; 
frozen, 244; opened by Federal forces, 
273 ; improvements of, 291. ■ 
Mobile, first capital of Louisiana, 22. 
Montplaissir, M. de, establishes tobacco fac- 
tory, 49. 
Moore, Thomas O., elected governor, 247; 

seizes arsenals and military stores, 259. 
Morgan, Colonel George, asks right of pas- 
sage for American army, 122. 
Mouton, Alexander, elected governor, 246. 
Mouton, Alfred, Confederate General, 272. 
Napoleon, his design against Louisiana, 156; 

sells Louisiana to United States, 158. 
Narvaez, Pamphilo (or Panfilo) de, 16. 
Natchez, The (see Indians). 
Negro plot, 144; and insurrection, 192 
New Iberia, settlement of, 123. 
New Orleans, 22 ; site of, chosen, 48; visited 
by Charlevoix, 62; poor sanitary arraug- 
ments of, 65, condition of in 1726, 72, 
fortified, 78, prosperity of in 1732, 87; 
resists Spanish occupation, 107 ; society in 
1766, no, submits to O'Reilly, 114; fire 
at, 134, "census of, 134; rebuilt, 136; trade 
with Philadelplua, 136; defenceless condi- 
tion of, 139; fortified by Carondelet, 139; 
place of refuge for French eiitigres, 143 ; 
sanitary condition of, in 1795, 147; defenses 
of, 156; overrun with spies, 153 ; character 
of in 1803, 162, 163 ; real character of, 
181; martiallawin, 187; Burr's emissaries 
i") 187; growing importance of, ig6 , 
threatened by British, 203 ; and General 
Jackson, 212; Battle of, 224, 229; rejoicing 
over victory, 235 ; a Creole city, 239; enor- 
mous traflic of, 245; expedition against, 
263, Farragtit captures, 270; disturbances 
■ in, 280, 281 ; exposition, 288. 
Nichols, Colonel, leads British land forces, 

202. 
Oaks, The, dueling ground, 248. 
Ocean Springs, natural beauties of, 25. 
Ogden, Peter V., arrested for conspiracy, 
187. 



O'Reilly, Don Alexander, lands at New 
Orleans, 113; arrests the insurrectionists, 
ris; punishes them, 115; stamps out insur- 
rection, 116; his character, 116, 118; his 
administration, 117; superseded by Bucca- 
re!ly, 118. 
Packenham, Sir Edward, British commander 
at Battle of New Orleans, 215: makes a 
reconnaissance, 217; at Battle of New 
Orleans, 226 ; death of, 230. 
Panmure, Fort, captured by Englisli insur- 
gents, 128. 
Pass Christian, natural beauties of, 25. 
Pauger, M. de, examines site of New Or- 
leans, 54. 
Pensacola, 22, 24 ; captured by Bienville, 49 ; 
retaken by Vallero, 50 ; captured by Champ- 
meslin and Bienville, 53; captured by 
Spaniards under Izrabel and Galvez, 128; 
captured by Jackson, 202. 
Percy, Sir W. H., commands British fleet, 

202. 
Perier, M, de, supersedes Bienville as gover- 
nor, 72 ; asks aid against Indians, 73 ; re- 
ports Indian troubles, 77; determines to 
exterminate the Natchez Indians, 80; mas- 
sacres the Chouacas, 83 ; destroys the 
Natchez, 84; disliked by colonists, 88. 
Plnnche, at Battle of New Orleans, 215. 
Port Hudson, captured, 273. 
Porter, Major, drives Spaniards from Ameri- 
can territory, 185. 
Rhea, John, president of " West Florida," 

192. 
Robinson, Thomas R., elected governor, 

224. 
Roman, Bienvenu, elected governor, 245; 

again elected, 246. 
Roosevelt, T. L., on The Caroline, 214. 
Rosalie, Fort, buih, 37; destroyed by In- 
dians, 76; new fort built, 79. 
Roux, M., commandant of Cat Island, killed 

by his soldiers, 100. 
St. Ceran, 296. 

Salcedo, Don Juan Manuel de, Spanish gov- 
ernor, 155 ; restricts the Mississippi com- 
merce, 155. 
Sanvolle, de la Villantry, lieutenant of d'Iber- 
ville, 26; death of, 30. 
Serigny, La Moyne de, arrives, 49. 
Sevier, John, governor of " Fiankland," 135. 
Shea, Dr., on De Soto, 15. 
Ship Island, settlement at, 22 ; location of, 

23- 

Shreveport, Confederate capita. 273. 



INDEX. 



337 



Smith, Charles C, on Acadian settlers, 103 

(note). 
Soto, Hernando de, 11-15. 
Spaniards in Li>iiisi.ina, 24; attack Mobile, 
50; harass the colony, 53-57; obtain col- 
ony by treaty, 103 ; delay taking possession, 
108; colonial revolt against, no; fleet and 
army dispatched to Louisiana, 112; in- 
trigues to gain United Slates territory, 135 ; 
ignorance of Napoleon's p!ans, 160; admin- 
istration of, 163 ; delivers i)rovince to 
France, 170; relinquish last territory, 1S5. 
Steele, Andrew, secretary of "West Florida," 

192. 
Swartwout, Samuel, arrested for conspiracy, 

187. 
" Territory of Orleans," see Louisiana. 
"Territory of West Florida," The, organ- 
ized, 192; anne.\ed to "Territory of Or- 
leans," 192. 
Thomas, Captain, leads attack on Baton 

Rouge, 191. 
Ulloa, Don .Antonio de, arrives to take posses- 
sion of Louisiana for Spain, 104; delays 
the act, 107; resisted by colonists, loS; 
sails for Cuba, loS. 
United .States, Independence of, 130; citizens 
intrigue for union with .Spain, 135 ; troubles 
with Louisiana, 153; purchases Louisiana 
for France, 158; takes possession of Louis- 
iana, 173. 



Unzaga, Don Luis de, Spanish governor, 

iiS; his administration, 121. 
Vallero, Marquis of, retakes Pen.sacola, 50. 
Vaudreuil, Pierre Francois, Marquis de, gov- 
ernor of colony, 96; attacks the Indians, 
98; appointed governor of Canada, 99; 
character of his administration in Louis- 
iana, 99. 
Victor, General, acts for French govern- 
ment, 160. 
Villi^re, General, at Rattle of New Orleans, 

215; elected governor, 243. 
Villiere, M. de, joins re\olt against Spain, 
1:0; drives Ulloa from the province, no; 
atteiripts to leave colony, 112; murder of, 
115. 
Watt, Mr., on Law's schemes, 46. 
Walker, Joseph, elected governor, 247. 
While, Edward, elected governor, 246. 
Wilkinson, James, appears in New Orleans, 
133; favors Miro's schemes, 134; intrigues 
of, 135; and Carondelet, 149; andOayoso, 
150; in New Orleans, 154; U. S. commis- 
sion to secure Louisiana, 171 ; takes posses- 
sion, 173; marches against Spaniards, 186; 
intrigues with Governor Codero, 186, 
(note); fortifies New Orleans against Burr, 
1S7; urges new fortifications, 199; super- 
seded, 200. 
Wycklifife, Robert, elected governor, 247. 



THE STORY OF THE STATES 

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